THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY"; 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


IN  MEMORY  OF 
MRS.  VIRGINIA  B.  SPORER 


THE  MODERN  LIBRARY 

OF  THE  WORLD'S  BEST  BOOKS 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES 


THE  MODERN  LIBRARY 


RECENT  PUBLICATIONS 


OSCAR  WILDE 

Dorian    Gray 

Poems 
STRINDBERG 

Married 
KIPLING 

Soldiers   Three 
STEVENSON 

Treasure    Island 
HENRIK  IBSEN 

A    Dolls'    House,    Etc. 

Hedda    Gabler,    Etc. 
ANATOLE    FRANCE 

The    Red    Lily 

The     Crime     of   Sylvestre 

Bonnard 
DE  MAUPASSANT 

Mademoiselle   Fifi,   Etc. 
DOSTOYEVSKY 

Poor  People 
MAETERLINCK 
A  Miracle  of  St.  Antony,  Etc. 

SCHOPENHAUER 

Studies   in   Pessimism 
SAMUEL   BUTLER 

The  Way   of  All   Flesh 
GEORGE   MEREDITH 

Diana  of  the  Crossways 
G.  B.  SHAW 

An  Unsocial  Socialist 
GEO.   MOORE 

Confessions    of    a    Young 

Man 
THOMAS   HARDY 

Mayor    of    Casterbridge 


THOS.    SELTZER 

Best    Russian    Stories 
NIETZSCHE 

Beyond    Good    and    Evil 

Thus   Spake   Zarathustra 
TURGENEV 

Fathers    and    Sons 
SWINBURNE 

Poems 
WM.    DEAN    HOWELLS 

A  Hazard  of  New  Fortunes 
W.  S.  GILBERT 

The   Mikado    and   others 
GUSTAVE   FLAUBERT 

Madame    Bovary 
JAMES   STEPHENS 

Mary  Mary 
ANTON   CHEKHOV 

Rothschild's  Fiddle,  Etc. 
ARTHUR   SCHNITZLER 

Anatole    and    others 
SUDERMANN 

Dame  Care 
LORD   DUNSANY 

A  Dreamer's  Tales 
G.    K.    CHESTERTON 

The    Man    Who    Was 

Thursday 
H.    G.    WELLS 

The  War  in   the  Air 

Ann    Veronica 
HAECKEL,  WEISMANN, 
Etc 

Evolution    in    Modern 

Thought 


Other    Titles    in    Preparation 


A     HAZARD 
OF     NEW     FORTUNES 

BY  WILLIAM   DEAN   HOWELLS 

INTRODUCTION     BY     ALEXANDER     HARVEY 

TWO   VOLUMES   IN    ONE 

1ODER» 

xppc 

@ 

BONI   AND   LIVERIGHT,    INC. 

PUBLISHERS       .'  . 

.'  .       NEW    YORK 

Printed  in  the 

United  States  of  America 


COPYRIGHT,     1889,    BY 
WILLIAM    DEAN    HOWELLS 


WILLIAM  DEAN  HOWELLS 

Three  significant  facts  challenge  our  attention  at  the 
outset  in  considering  the  work  of  William  Dean  Howells  as 
an  author.  In  the  first  place  he  is  a  literary  artist — perhaps 
one  of  the  very  greatest  of  literary  artists.  In  the  next  place 
he  is  the  champion  of  realism  against  romanticism.  Finally 
he  had  no  college  education.  He  is  a  self-taught  man. 

In  characterizing  Howells  as  a  literary  artist  we  meai 
that  his  work  has  beauty,  precisely  as  the  sculpture  of  the 
Greeks  has  beauty.  There  is  in  his  writing  the  "thrill" 
derivable  from  contemplation  of,  say,  a  statue  by  Praxiteles, 
or  a  beautiful  woman.  All  of  us  are  not  sufficiently  sophis- 
ticated to  account  for  the  nature  of  this  pleasure  in  reading 
Howells.  It  is  a  secret  of  style  and  that  secret  has  baffled 
generations  of  great  critics.  Shakespeare  had  this  secret, 
and  so  had  Virgil  and  Milton.  The  English  language  is  a 
more  exquisite  instrument  because  of  the  beauty  of  the  man- 
ner of  Howells  when  he  tells  his  story.  This  explains  the 
difficulty  of  indicating  the  greatest  work  of  the  author  of 
"A  Hazard  of  New  Fortunes."  Every  one  of  his  novels  has 
this  inexplicable  charm  of  style.  Nor  must  it  be  supposed 
that  it  is  a  charm  appreciable  only  by  the  initiated.  A 
stylist  of  true  power  can  charm  even  the  casual  reader  with 
his  manner.  It  is  the  spell  of  beauty.  Who  can  say  wh; 
there  is  in  the  spell  of  a  woman's  beauty,  or  in  the  spell  of 
a  beauty  exemplified  in  the  work  of  Corot?  There  are 
artists  who  can  introduce  this  effect  of  beauty  into  what- 
ever they  achieve,  be  they  poets,  painters,  sculptors,  archi- 

2041731 


x  INTRODUCTION 

tects  or  musicians.  Howells  is  in  that  great  company.  The 
proof  is  afforded  by  stories  like  "A  Modern  Instance,"  one 
of  the  most  beautifully  constructed  novels  in  the  English 
language.  Beauty  is  not  necessarily  power  in  the  sense  that 
Balzac  has  power.  Balzac  is  at  times  strangely  deficient  in 
beauty  from  the  artistic  standpoint.  Compare  his  "Eugenie 
Grandet"  with  "The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham."  In  this  tale 
of  the  Boston  merchant  Howells  has  woven  an  exquisite 
tapestry  of  words  and  phrases. 

The  realism  for  which  Howells  stands  involves  a  rather 
more  complex  literary  idea  than  that  of  mere  beauty.  Real- 
ism as  a  term  in  literary  criticism  is  difficult  to  define  in  a 
phrase  that  will  pass  muster  with  its  friends.  Speaking 
generally,  Howells  stands  for  a  reflection  of  what  to  him  is 
life.  There  must  be  a  strict  fidelity  to  facts  of  human  ex- 
perience. The  reader  must  be  vividly  impressed  with  the 
idea  that  the  people  of  whom  he  reads  in  a  novel  are  like 
himself,  people  who  say  and  do  what  he  would  or  say  in  the 
same  circumstances,  or,  if  not,  that  they  are  people  of  a 
kind  he  has  met,  even  if  they  be  different  from  himself.  This: 
conception  of  the  functions  of  the  novelist  implies  an  amaz- 
ing capacity  for  observation  of  life,  for  the  analysis  of  char- 
acter. The  "plot"  of  the  story  must  exclude  the  element 
of  the  purely  imaginative,  the  fantastic,  the  wildly  ex- 
travagant in  the  "romantic"  or  unreal  definition  of  those 
terms.  Life  must  not  be  spun  out  of  the  writer's  head  but 
studied  at  first  hand.  The  young  person  reading  -Howells 
is,  therefore,  never  misled  into  a  view  of  life  based  upon 
dream  elements.  His  head  is  never  filled  with  "nonsense." 
The  young  girl  is  not  set  to  a  task  of  reverie,  with  a  fairy 
prince  in  the  background  ready  to  save  her  from  terrible 
adventures  with  heavy  villains. 

It  might  be  thought  that  Howells  has  given  himself  a  hard 
task.  He  takes  the  daily  lives  of  American  men  and  women, 
some  of  them  in  Europe,  and  without  varying  a  jot  from 
the  actualities  of  their  experience  he  proceeds  about  the  busi- 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

ness  of  telling  a  story.  The  result  is  intensely  exciting. 
This  is  the  miracle  of  the  Howells'  method.  It  is  very  dif- 
ficult to  convey  to  an  "outsider"  the  nature  of  the  excite- 
ment afforded  by  reading  Howells.  A  summary  of  his  most 
tremendous  "plot"  is  like  a  record  of  a  commonplace  summer 
in  a  conventional  atmosphere.  We  listen  to  the  talk  of 
people  we  have  all  met,  saying  the  things  we  have  all  heard. 
There  is  no  marked  eccentricity  of  character  delineation  in 
the  Dickens  manner — no  Wilkins  Micawbers  come  up  out 
of  the  void,  no  great  "Mel"  of  the  Meredithian  order  stuns 
us.  The  young  ladies  are  very  young  sometimes  and  very 
ladylike  in  Howells.  Their  names  are  the  names  we  all 
know.  Howells  enters  more  closely  into  the  details  of 
everyday  life  than  most  novelists  care  to  do.  The  furnish- 
ings of  a  room,  the  appearance  of  a  hotel  dining  palace,  the 
swish  of  a  dress — these  things  concern  him  tremendously. 
The  physical  aspect  of  a  young  man  or  of  an  old  one  will 
concern  him  also. 

Why  do  we  revel  in  these  commonplaces?  One  expla- 
,^  nation  is  undoubtedly  the  quality  of  the  Howells'  humor. 
He  is  one  of  the  most  exquisite  humorists  in  the  language — 
so  exquisite,  indeed,  that  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  he  could 
be  happily  translated  into  any  other  language  than  his  own. 
There  is  no  "horseplay"  in  the  Howells'  humor,  no  display 
of  qualities  associated  with  the  American  name  in  this  field. 
It  would  be  unfair  to  compare  it  with  that  of  Jane  Austen, 
although  Howells  has  all  her  delicacy,  all  her  subtlety.  He 
has  more  action.  The  humor  is  not  merely  in  the  "slyness" 
of  the  manner.  Howells  has  a  different  attitude  to  life.  The 
humor  of  Jane  Austen  is  feminine  and  Anglo-Saxon  whereas 
that  of  Howells  is  steeped  in  flavors  that  are  Gallic.  There 
is  something  paradoxically  French  in  the  humor  of  Howells, 
a  quality  almost  Celtic  in  its  gusto.  Nevertheless,  it  is  a 
humor  of  the  kind  which  most  critics  agree  to  call  "quiet." 
Still,  he  can  be  uproarious  in  his  effect  upon  the  reader. 
This  feature  of  his  work  emerges  most  conspicuously  in  his 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

dialogue.  It  has  wit  without  extravagance  of  the  forced 
note,  reality  without  dullness.  It  grows  out  of  the  situation 
in  which  the  characters  find  themselves.  It  is  saturated  with 
the  gloriously  high  spirits  of  youth,  its  freshness,  its  readi- 
ness to  see  the  bright  light  through  whatever  gloom. 

The  life  story  of  Howells  is  very  significant  in  the  light 
of  the  fact  that  his  educational  opportunities  in  the  insti- 
tutional meaning  of  the  term  were  so  few.  He  was  born  in 
Ohio  in  a  very  small  town  as  long  ago  as  1837.  His  father 
was  a  printer  in  the  professional  sense  of  the  word,  that  is 
to  say  a  man  of  unusual  education  and  of  wide  culture,  who 
combined  the  functions  of  publisher  and  editor  in  the  con- 
duct of  a  paper  that  had  won  for  itself  local  influence  and 
political  importance.  Howells  learned  to  set  type  when  he 
was  a  mere  boy.  A  genius  so  striking  as  his  was  sure  to 
illustrate  the  well-worn  truth  that  nothing  really  worth  learn- 
ing can  ever  be  taught.  There  is  something  ridiculous  in  the 
notion  that  anyone  could  have  "taught"  William  Dean  How- 
ells to  "write."  His  entry  upon  the  formal  literary  career 
was  preceded  by  a  period  of  activity  in  his  father's  establish- 
ment as  typesetter  and  proofreader  and  then  as  reporter  in 
the  legislature  for  a  newspaper  in  Columbus.  He  had  sent 
his  first  contributions  to  The  Atlantic  Monthly  before  the 
outbreak  of  our  Civil  War.  They  were  poems  as  well  as 
essays.  For  writing  the  "campaign"  life  of  Lincoln  he  was 
made  consul  at  Venice. 

There  never  was  a  time  when  Howells  did  not  study  liter- 
ature— that  of  continental  Europe  as  well  as  that  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  world.  His  facility  in  the  acquisition  of  Euro- 
pean tongues  was  a  matter  of  course  in  one  with  his  sense 
of  words.  He  seems  to  have  paid  more  attention  to  Italian 
literature  than  to  that  of  the  French,  but  here  a  general 
remark  is  dangerous.  No  writer  gets  the  French  spirit  so 
completely  in  all  that  relates  to  literature  on  its  artistic 
side.  "My  Literary  Passions"  is  the  most  arresting  revela- 
tion of  the  unfolding  of  a  writer's  mind.  He  is  Puritanical 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

as  well  as  realistic  here.  Those  tendencies  accentuated 
themselves  when  he  returned  to  his  native  land,  working 
in  New  York  and  going  to  Boston  later — the  period  of  his 
service  in  The  Atlantic  Monthly.  He  reviewed,  noted, 
sketched,  read,  edited  long  before  he  won  his  way  as  a  novel- 
ist, long  before  he  deemed  himself  equipped  for  the  part. 
The  conception  of  the  novelist's  art  formed  by  Howells  ren- 
ders a  work  of  fiction  by  an  inexperienced  young  man  an 
absurdity,  a  contradiction  in  terms.  We  need  not  wonder, 
then,  if  his  great  novels  are  the  work  of  his  maturity. 

Howells  won  for  Boston  its  fame  for  "culture"  with  those 
directly  outside  its  influence.  He  created  the  Boston  young 
lady,  famous  for  her  doubts,  her  philosophy,  her  scruples 
and  her  delicacies.  The  inner  exclusive  world  of  scholars 
and  professors,  with  its  sprinkling  of  scholar  merchants  and 
intellectual  politicians  knew  of  this  position  of  Boston.  How- 
ells took  the  fame  of  the  town  in  this  detail  into  the  street. 
His  Bostonians  are  known  wherever  the  language  they  speak 
has  echoed.  He  rediscovered  the  Athens  of  America  and 
made  it  the  theme  of  paragraphs  in  the  newspapers.  In 
"fact,  the  possibilities  of  American  life  as  dealt  with  in  the 
realistic  manner  were  a  surprise  to  the  readers  of  novels. 
It  ought  to  be  pointed  out  here,  nevertheless,  that  Howells 
brought  to  his  realism  a  genius  for  style,  a  humor  of  the 
rarest  kind,  a  dramatic  instinct  that  could  make  the  most 
of  the  slightest  situation,  a  knowledge  of  the  American  char- 
acter altogether  unprecedented  and  an  experience  in  the 
circles  he  described  which  no  other  man  of  his  generation 
could  be  given  credit  for.  This  is  a  very  important  point 
in  estimating  the  theory  of  realism  against  romanticism  upon 
which  his  art  is  based.  Had  he  been  a  mediocrity  his  real- 
ism would  have  had  no  vogue.  His  imitators  are  for  the 
most  part  beneath  contempt,  being  destitute  of  his  rare 
equipment. 

It  has  been  insisted  that  "A  Hazard  of  New  Fortunes"  is 
the  most  "important"  of  all  the  novels  of  Howells.  The 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

coming  of  a  new  time  is  distinctly  foreseen  by  the  artist  who 
created  this  masterpiece.  The  somewhat  smug  and  com- 
placent America  which  told  itself  that  all  the  problems  of 
"democracy"  had  been  solved  is  here  given  a  blow.  It  was 
a  great  blow  at  the  time.  It  might  be  thought  a  gentle  tap 
on  the  cheek  in  this  age.  The  nation  is  in  the  first  faint 
breath  of  the  spirit  that  was  to  bring  Socialism  to  all  man- 
kind as  the  central  economic  idea  of  a  world  proletariat. 
The  things  which  the  book  is  concerned  with  are  common- 
places now,  but  the  picture  of  the  time  when  they  were 
strange  and  new  is  vivid.  We  have  the  humor,  the  dialogue, 
the  insight  into  character,  the  dramatic  instinct  for  the  su- 
preme moment,  the  style  and  the  plot — the  combination  of 
many  merits  into  a  single  effect  which  is  the  gift  of  Howells, 
the  power  that  makes  "A  Hazard  of  New  Fortunes"  a  work 
of  art  as  well  as  a  wonderful  story. 

ALEXANDER  HARVEY. 


"We  have  the  humor,  the  dialogue,  the  instinct  into  char- 
acter, the  dramatic  instinct  for  the  supreme  moment,  the 
style  and  the  plot — the  combination  of  many  merits  into  a 
single  effect  which  is  the  gift  of  Howells,  the  power  that 
makes  'A  Hazard  of  New  Fortunes'  a  work  of  art  as  well 
as  a  wonderful  story." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES 
VOL.  I 


A  HAZAED  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

PART  FIRST. 
I. 

"Now,  you  think  this  thing  over,  March,  and  let 
me  know  the  last  of  next  week,"  said  Fulkerson. 
He  got  up  from  the  chair  which  he  had  been  sitting 
astride,  with  his  face  to  its  back,  and  tilting  toward 
March  on  its  hind-legs,  and  came  and  rapped  upon 
his  table  with  his  thin  bamboo  stick.  "  What  you 
want  to  do  is  to  get  out  of  the  insurance  business, 
anyway.  You  acknowledge  that  yourself.  You 
never  liked  it,  and  now  it  makes  you  sick ;  in  other 
words,  it 's  killing  you.  You  ain't  an  insurance  man 
by  nature.  You're  a  natural-born  literary  man; 
and  you  've  been  going  against  the  grain.  Now,  I 
offer  you  a  chance  to  go  with  the  grain.  I  don't  say 
you  're  going  to  make  your  everlasting  fortune,  but 
I'll  give  you  a  living  salary,  and  if  the  thing  suc- 
ceeds you  '11  share  in  its  success.  We  '11  all  share  in 
its  success.  That's  the  beauty  of  it.  I  tell  you, 
VOL.  I.— 1 


2  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

March,  this  is  the  greatest  idea  that  has  been  struck 

since "  Fulkerson  stopped  and  searched  his 

mind  for  a  fit  image — "since  the  creation  of  man." 

He  put  his  leg  up  over  the  corner  of  March's 
table  and  gave  himself  a  sharp  cut  on  the  thigh,  and 
leaned  forward  to  get  the  full  effect  of  his  words 
upon  his  listener. 

March  had  his  hands  clasped  together  behind  his 
head,  and  he  took  one  of  them  down  long  enough 
to  put-  his  inkstand  and  mucilage-bottle  out  of 
Fulkerson's  way.  After  many  years'  experiment  of 
a  moustache  and  whiskers,  he  now  wore  his  grizzled 
beard  full,  but  cropped  close ;  it  gave  him  a  certain 
grimness,  corrected  by  the  gentleness  of  his  eyes. 

"Some  people  don't  think  much  of  the  creation 
of  man,  nowadays.  Why  stop  at  that  1  Why  not 
say  since  the  morning  stars  sang  together  ? " 

"No,  sir;  no,  sir!  I  don't  want  to  claim  too 
much,  and  I  draw  the  line  at  the  creation  of  man. 
I  'm  satisfied  with  that  But  if  you  want  to  ring 
the  morning  stars  into  the  prospectus,  all  right;  I 
won't  go  back  on  you." 

"  But  I  don't  understand  why  you  've  set  your 
mind  on  me,"  March  said.  "I  haven't  had  any 
magazine  experience,  you  know  that ;  and  I  haven't 
seriously  attempted  to  do  anything  in  literature 
since  I  was  married.  I  gave  up  smoking  and  the 
Muse  together.  I  suppose  I  could  still  manage  a 
cigar,  but  I  don't  believe  I  could " 

"Muse  worth  a  cent."  Fulkerson  took  the 
thought  out  of  his  mouth  and  put  it  into  his  own 


A  HAZARD  OF  NjBW  FORTUNES.  3 

words.  "  I  know.  Well,  I  don't  want  you  to. 
I  don't  care  if  you  never  write  a  line  for  the  thing, 
though  you  needn't  reject  anything  of  yours,  if  it 
happens  to  be  good,  on  that  account.  And  I  don't 
want  much  experience  in  my  editor ;  rather  not 
have  it.  You  told  me,  didn't  you,  that  you  used 
to  do  some  newspaper  work  before  you  settled 
down?" 

"Yes;  I  thought  my  lines  were  permanently  cast 
in  those  places  once.  It  was  more  an  accident  than 
anything  else  that  I  got  into  the  insurance  business. 
I  suppose  I  secretly  hoped  that  if  I  made  my  living 
by  something  utterly  different,  I  could  come  more 
freshly  to  literature  proper  in  my  leisure." 

"  I  see ;  and  you  found  the  insurance  business 
too  many  for  you.  Well,  anyway,  you've  always 
had  a  hankering  for  the  inkpots ;  and  the  fact  that 
you  first  gave  me  the  idea  of  this  thing  shows 
that  you've  done  more  or  less  thinking  about 
magazines." 

"  Yes— less." 

"Well,  all  right.  Now  don't  you  be  troubled. 
jt  know  what  I  want,  generally  speaking,  and  in 
this  particular  instance  I  want  you.  I  might  get 
a  man  of  more  experience,  but  I  should  probably 
get  a  man  of  more  prejudice  and  self-conceit  along 
with  him,  and  a  man  with  a  following  of  the  literary 
hangers-on  that  are  sure  to  get  round  an  editor 
sooner  or  later.  I  want  to  start  fair;  and  I've 
found  out  in  the  syndicate  business  all  the  men  that 
are  worth  having.  But  they  know  me,  and  they 


4  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

don't  know  you,  and  that 's  where  we  shall  have  the 
pull  on  them.  They  won't  be  able  to  work  the 
thing.  Don't  you  be  anxious  about  the  experience. 
I  Ve  got  experience  enough  of  my  own  to  run  a 
dozen  editors.  What  I  want  is  an  editor  who  has 
taste,  and  you  Ve  got  it ;  and  conscience,  and  you  've 
got  it ;  and  horse-sense,  and  you  Ve  got  that.  And 
I  like  you  because  you  're  a  Western  man,  and  I  'm 
another.  I  do  cotton  to  a  Western  man  when  I 
find  him  off  East  here,  holding  his  own  with  the 
best  of  'em,  and  showing  'em  that  he 's  just  as  much 
civilised  as  they  are.  We  both  know  what  it  is  to 
have  our  bright  home  in  the  setting  sun  ;  heigh  "? " 

"  I  think  we  Western  men  who  Ve  come  East  are 
apt  to  take  ourselves  a  little  too  objectively,  and  to 
feel  ourselves  rather  more  representative  than  we 
need,"  March  remarked. 

Fulkerson  was  delighted.  "  You  Ve  hit  it !  We 
do  !  We  are  ! " 

"  And  as  for  holding  my  own,  I  'm  not  very  proud 
of  what  I  Ve  done  in  that  way  ;  it 's  been  very  little 
to  hold.  But  I  know  what  you  mean,  Fulkerson, 
and  I  Ve  felt  the  same  thing  myself ;  it  warmed  me 
toward  you  when  we  first  met.  I  can't  help  suffus- 
ing a  little  to  any  man  when  I  hear  that  he  was 
born  on  the  other  side  of  the  Alleghanies.  It 's  per- 
fectly stupid.  I  despise  the  same  thing  when  I  see 
it  in  Boston  people." 

Fulkerson  pulled  first  one  of  his  blond  whiskers 
and  then  the  other,  and  twisted  the  end  of  each  into 
a  point,  which  he  left  to  untwine  itself.  He  fixed 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  5 

March  with  his  little  eyes,  which  had  a  curious 
innocence  in  their  cunning,  and  tapped  the  desk  im- 
mediately in  front  of  him.  "  What  I  like  about  you 
is  that  you  're  broad  in  your  sympathies.  The  first 
time  I  saw  you,  that  night  on  the  Quebec  boat,  I  said 
to  myself,  '  There 's  a  man  I  want  to  know.  There 's 
a  human  being.'  I  was  a  little  afraid  of  Mrs. 
March  and  the  children,  but  I  felt  at  home  with 
you — thoroughly  domesticated — before  I  passed  a 
word  with  you ;  and  when  you  spoke  first,  and 
opened  up  with  a  joke  over  that  fellow's  tableful  of 
light  literature  and  Indian  moccasins  and  birch-bark 
toy  canoes  and  stereoscopic  views,  I  knew  that  we 
were  brothers — spiritual  twins.  I  recognised  the 
Western  style  of  fun,  and  I  thought,  when  you  said 
you  were  from  Boston,  that  it  was  some  of  the  same. 
But  I  see  now  that  it 's  being  a  cold  fact,  as  far  as 
the  last  fifteen  or  twenty  years  count,  is  just  so 
much  gain.  You  know  both  sections,  and  you  can 
make  this  thing  go,  from  ocean  to  ocean." 

"We  might  ring  that  into  the  prospectus,  too," 
March  suggested,  with  a  smile.  "  You  might  call 
the  thing  From  Sea  to  Sea.  By  the  way,  what  are 
you  going  to  call  it  ?  " 

"I  haven't  decided  yet;  that's  one  of  the  things 
I  wanted  to  talk  with  you  about.  I  had  thought  of 
The  Syndicate-,  but  it  sounds  kind  of  dry,  and  it 
don't  seem  to  cover  the  ground  exactly.  I  should 
like  something  that  would  express  the  co-operative 
character  of  the  thing ;  but  I  don't  know  as  I  can 
get  it." 


6  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Might  call  it  The  Mutual" 

"  They  'd  thiiik  it  was  an  insurance  paper.  No, 
that  won't  do.  But  Mutual  comes  pretty  near  the 
idea.  If  we  could  get  something  like  that,  it  would 
pique  curiosity  ;  and  then  if  we  could  get  paragraphs 
afloat  explaining  that  the  contributors  were  to  be 
paid  according  to  the  sales,  it  would  be  a  first- 
rate  ad." 

He  bent  a  wide,  anxious,  inquiring  smile  upon 
March,  who  suggested  lazily,  "You  might  call  it 
The  Round-Robin.  That  would  express  the  central 
idea  of  irresponsibility.  As  I  understand,  every- 
body is  to  share  the  profits  and  be  exempt  from  the 
losses.  Or,  if  I'm  wrong,  and  the  reverse  is  true, 
you  might  call  it  The  Army  of  Martyrs.  Come,  that 
sounds  attractive,  Fulkerson !  Or  what  do  you 
think  of  The  Fifth  Wheel  1  That  would  forestall  the 
criticism  that  there  are  too  many  literary  periodicals 
already.  Or,  if  you  want  to  put  forward  the  idea  of 
complete  independence,  you  could  call  it  The  Free 
Lance  ;  or " 

"  Or  The  Hog  on  Ice — either  stand  up  or  fall  down, 
you  know,"  Fulkerson  broke  in  coarsely.  "But 
we  '11  leave  the  name  of  the  magazine  till  we  get  the 
editor.  I  see  the  poison 's  beginning  to  work  in 
you,  March;  and  if  I  had  time,  I'd  leave  the 
result  to  time.  But  I  haven't.  I've  got  to  know 
inside  of  the  next  week  To  come  down  to  business 
with  you,  March,  I  shan't  start  this  thing  unless  I 
can  get  you  to  take  hold  of  it." 

He  seemed  to  expect  some  acknowledgment,  and 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  7 

March  said,  "  Well,  that 's  very  nice  of  you, 
Fulkerson." 

"No,  sir;  no,  sir!  I've  always  liked  you,  and 
wanted  you,  ever  since  we  met  that  first  night.  I 
had  this  thing  inchoately  in  my  mind  then,  when 
I  was  telling  you  about  the  newspaper  syndicate 
business — beautiful  vision  of  a  lot  of  literary  fellows 
breaking  loose  from  the  bondage  of  publishers,  and 
playing  it  alone " 

"  You  might  call  it  The  Lone  Hand ;  that  would 
be  attractive,"  March  interrupted.  "  The  whole 
West  would  know  what  you  meant." 

Fulkerson  was  talking  seriously,  and  March  was 
listening  seriously ;  but  they  both  broke  off  and 
laughed.  Fulkerson  got  down  off  the  table,  and 
made  some  turns  about  the  room.  It  was  growing 
late ;  the  October  sun  had  left  the  top  of  the  tall 
windows ;  it  was  still  clear  day,  but  it  would  soon 
be  twilight ;  they  had  been  talking  a  long  time. 
Fulkerson  came  and  stood  with  his  little  feet  wide 
apart,  and  bent  his  little  lean,  square  face  on  March: 
"  See  here  !  How  much  do  you  get  out  of  this  thing 
here,  anyway  ? " 

"  The  insurance  business  1 "  March  hesitated  a 
moment,  and  then  said,  with  a  certain .  effort  of  re- 
serve, "At  present  about  three  thousand/'  He 
looked  up  at  Fulkerson  with  a  glance,  as  if  he 
had  a  mind  to  enlarge  upon  the  fact,  and  then 
dropped  his  eyes  without  saying  more. 

Whether  Fulkerson  had  not  thought  it  so  much 
or  not,  he  said, ."Well,  I'll  give  you  thirty-five 


8  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

hundred.  Come  !  And  your  chances  in  the  suc- 
cess." 

"  We  won't  count  the  chances  in  the  success. 
And  I  don't  believe  thirty-five  hundred  would  go 
any  further  in  New  York  than  three  thousand  in 
Boston." 

"  But  you  don't  live  on  three  thousand  here  1  " 

"  No ;  my  wife  has  a  little  property." 

"  Well,  she  won't  lose  the  income  if  you  go  to 
New  York.  I  suppose  you  pay  six  or  seven  hundred 
a  year  for  your  house  here.  You  can  get  plenty 
of  flats  in  New  York  for  the  same  money ;  and  I 
understand  you  can  get  all  sorts  of  provisions  for 
less  than  you  pay  now — three  or  four  cents  on  the 
pound.  Come ! " 

This  was  by  no  means  the  first  talk  they  had  had 
about  the  matter;  every  three  or  four  months  during 
the  past  two  years  the  syndicate  man  had  dropped 
in  upon  March  to  air  the  scheme  and  to  get  his  im- 
pressions of  it.  This  had  happened  so  often  that  it 
had  come  to  be  a  sort  of  joke  between  them.  But 
now  Fulkerson  clearly  meant  business,  and  March 
had  a  struggle  to  maintain  himself  in  a  firm  poise  of 
refusal. 

"  I  dare  say  it  wouldn't — or  it  needn't — cost  so 
very  much  more,  but  I  don't  want  to  go  to  New 
York ;  or  my  wife  doesn't.  It 's  the  same  thing." 

"  A  good  deal  samer,"  Fulkerson  admitted. 

March  did  not  quite  like  his  candour,  and  he  went 
on  with  dignity.  "  It 's  very  natural  she  shouldn't. 
She  has  always  lived  in  Boston ;  she 's  attached  to 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  9  - 

the  place.  Now,  if  you  were  going  to  start  The 
Fifth  Wheel  in  Boston " 

Fulkerson  slowly  and  sadly  shook  his  head,  but 
decidedly,  "  Wouldn't  do.  You  might  as  well  say 
St.  Louis  or  Cincinnati.  There 's  only  one  city  that 
belongs  to  the  whole  country,  and  that's  New 
York." 

"  Yes,  I  know,"  sighed  March ;  "  and  Boston  be- 
longs to  the  Bostonians ;  but  they  like  you  to  make 
yourself  at  home  while  you  're  visiting." 

"  If  you  '11  agree  to  make  phrases  like  that,  right 
along,  and  get  them  into  The  Round-Robin  some- 
how, I  '11  say  four  thousand,"  said  Fulkerson.  "  You 
think  it  over  now,  March.  You  talk  it  over  with 
Mrs.  March ;  I  know  you  will,  anyway ;  and  I 
might  as  well  make  a  virtue  of  advising  you  to 
do  it.  Tell  her  I  advised  you  to  do  it,  and  you 
let  me  know  before  next  Saturday  what  you've 
decided." 

March  shut  down  the  rolling  top  of  his  desk  in 
the  corner  of  the  room,  and  walked  Fulkerson  out 
before  him.  It  was  so  late  that  the  last  of  the  chore- 
women  who  washed  down  the  marble  halls  and  stairs 
of  the  great  building  had  wrung  out  her  floor-cloth 
and  departed,  leaving  spotless  stone  and  a  clean 
damp  smell  in  the  darkening  corridors  behind  her. 

"  Couldn't  offer  you  such  swell  quarters  in  New 
York,  March,"  Fulkerson  said  as  he  went  tack-tack- 
ing down  the  steps  with  his  small  boot-heels.  "  But 
I  Ve  got  my  eye  on  a  little  house  round  in  West 
Eleventh  Street,  that  I  'm  going  to  fit  up  for  my 
1* 


10  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

bachelor's  hall  in  the  third  story,  and  adapt  for  The 
Lone  Hand  in  the  first  and  second,  if  this  thing  goes 
through ;  and  I  guess  we  '11  be  pretty  comfortable. 
It's  right  on  the  Sand  Strip — no  malaria  of  any 
kind." 

"  I  don't  know  that  I  'm  going  to  share  its  salu- 
brity with  you  yet,"  March  sighed  in  an  obvious 
travail  which  gave  Fulkerson  hopes. 

"  Oh  yes,  you  are,"  he  coaxed.  "  Now,  you  talk 
it  over  with  your  wife.  You  give  her  a  fair,  unpre- 
judiced chance  at  the  thing  on  its  merits,  and  I  'm 
very  much  mistaken  in  Mrs.  March  if  she  doesn't 
tell  you  to  go  in  and  win.  We  're  bound  to  win  ! " 

They  stood  on  the  outside  steps  of  the  vast  edifice 
beetling  like  a  granite  crag  above  them,  with  the 
stone  groups  of  an  allegory  of  life-insurance  fore- 
shortened in  the  bas-relief  overhead.  March  ab- 
sently lifted  his  eyes  to  it.  It  was  suddenly  strange 
after  so  many  years'  familiarity,  and  so  was  the  well- 
known  street  in  its  Saturday-evening  solitude.  He 
asked  himself,  with  prophetic  •  homesickness,  if  it 
were  an  omen  of  what  was  to  be.  But  he  only  said 
musingly,  "  A  fortnightly.  You  know  that  didn't 
work  in  England.  The  Fortnightly  is  published  once 
a  month  now." 

"  It  works  in  France,"  Fulkerson  retorted.  "  The 
Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  is  still  published  twice  a 
month.  I  guess  we  can  make  it  work  in  America — 
with  illustrations." 

"  Going  to  have  illustrations  ? " 

"  My  dear  boy  !     What  are  you  giving  me  1    Do 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  11 

I  look  like  the  sort  of  lunatic  who  would  start  a 
thing  in  the  twilight  of  the  nineteenth  century  with- 
out illustrations  1  Come  off ! " 

"  Ah,  that  complicates  it !  I  don't  know  anything 
about  art."  March's  look  of  discouragement  con- 
fessed the  hold  the  scheme  had  taken  upon  him. 

"  I  don't  want  you  to  ! "  Fulkerson  retorted. 
"  Don't  you  suppose  I  shall  have  an  art  man  1 " 

"  And  will  they — the  artists — work  at  a  reduced 
rate  too,  like  the  writers,  with  the  hopes  of  a  share 
in  the  success  1 " 

"  Of  course  they  will !  And  if  I  want  any  par- 
ticular man,  for  a  card,  I  '11  pay  him  big  money 
besides.  But  I  can  get  plenty  of  first-rate  sketches 
on  my  own  terms.  You  '11  see  !  They  '11  pour  in  !  " 

"Look  here,  Fulkerson,"  said  March,  "you'd 
better  call  this  fortnightly  of  yours  The  Madness  of 
the  Half -Moon ;  or  Bedlam,  Broke  Loose  wouldn't  be 
bad  !  Why  do  you  throw  away  all  your  hard  earn- 
ings on  such  a  crazy  venture  ?  Don't  do  it ! "  The 
kindness  which  March  had  always  felt,  in  spite  of 
his  wife's  first  misgivings  and  reservations,  for  the 
meny,  hopeful,  slangy,  energetic  little  creature 
trembled  in  his  voice.  They  had  both  formed  a 
friendship  for  Fulkerson  during  the  week  they  were 
together  in  Quebec.  When  he  was  not  working  the 
newspapers  there,  he  went  about  with  them  over  the 
familiar  ground  they  were  showing  their  children, 
and  was  simply  grateful  for  the  chance,  as  well  as 
very  entertaining  about  it  all.  The  children  liked 
him,  too ;  when  they  got  the  clew  to  his  intention, 


12  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

and  found  that  he  was  not  quite  serious  in  many  of 
the  things  he  said,  they  thought  he  was  great  fun. 
They  were  always  glad  when  their  father  brought 
him  home  on  the  occasion  of  Fulkerson's  visits  to 
Boston ;  and  Mrs.  March,  though  of  a  charier  hospi- 
tality, welcomed  Fulkerson  with  a  grateful  sense  of 
his  admiration  for  her  husband.  He  had  a  way  of 
treating  March  with  deference,  as  an  older  and  abler 
man,  and  of  qualifying  the  freedom  he  used  toward 
every  one  with  an  implication  that  March  tolerated 
it  voluntarily,  which  she  thought  very  sweet,  and 
even  refined. 

"Ah,  now  you're  talking  like  a  man  and  a 
brother  "  said  Fulkerson.  "Why,  March,  old 
man,  do  you  suppose  I  'd  come  on  here  and  try  to 
talk  you  into  this  thing  if  I  wasn't  morally,  if  I 
wasn't  perfectly,  sure  of  success  ?  There  isn't  any 
if  or  and  about  it.  I  know  my  ground,  every  inch  ; 
and  I  don't  stand  alone  on  it,"  he  added,  with  a 
significance  which  did  not  escape  March.  "  When 
you've  made  up  your  mind,  I  can  give  you  the 
proof ;  but  I  'm  not  at  liberty  now  to  say  anything 
more.  I  tell  you  it 's  going  to  be  a  triumphal  march 
from  the  word  go,  with  coffee  and  lemonade  for  the 
procession  along  the  whole  line.  All  you  've  got  to 
do  is  to  fall  in."  He  stretched  out  his  hand  to 
March.  "  You  let  me  know  as  soon  as  you  can." 

March  deferred  taking  his  hand  till  he  could  ask, 
"  Where  are  you  going  1 " 

"  Parker  House.  Take  the  half-past  ten  for  Xew 
York  to-night." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  13 

"I  thought  I  might  walk  your  way."  March 
looked  at  his  watch.  "  But  I  shouldn't  have  time. 
Good-bye  ! " 

He  now  let  Fulkerson  have  his  hand,  and  they 
exchanged  a  cordial  pressure.  Fulkerson  started 
off  at  a  quick,  light  pace.  Half  a  block  away  he 
stopped,  turned  round,  and  seeing  March  still  stand- 
ing where  he  had  left  him,  he  called  back  joyously, 
"  I  Ve  got  the  name  ! " 

«  What  ?  " 

"  Every  Other  Week? . 

« It  isn't  bad." 

«  Ta-ta  1 " 


IL 


ALL  the  way  up  to  the  South  End  March  pro- 
longed his  talk  with  Fulkerson,  and  at  his  door  in 
Nankeen  Square  he  closed  the  parley  with  a  plump 
refusal  to  go  to  New  York  on  any  terms.  His 
daughter  Bella  was  lying  in  wait  for  him  in  the  hall, 
and  she  threw  her  arms  round  his  neck  with  the 
exuberance  of  her  fourteen  years,  and  with  some- 
thing of  the  histrionic  intention  of  her  sex.  He 
pressed  on,  with  her  clinging  about  him,  to  the 
library,  and,  in  the  glow  of  his  decision  against 
Fulkerson,  kissed  his  wife,  where  she  sat  by  the 
study  lamp  reading  the  Transcript  through  her  first 
pair  of  eye-glasses :  it  was  agreed  in  the  family  that 
she  looked  distinguished  in  them,  or  at  any  rate 
cultivated.  She  took  them  off  to  give  him  a  glance 
of  question,  and  their  son  Tom  looked  up  from  his 
book  for  a  moment ;  he  was  in  his  last  year  at  the 
high-school,  and  was  preparing  for  Harvard. 

"I  didn't  get  away  from  the  office  till  half-past 
five,"  March  explained  to  his  wife's  glance,  "and 
then  I  walked.  I  suppose  dinner's  waiting.  I'm 
sorry,  but  I  won't  do  it  any  more." 

At   table   he   tried   to   be   gay  with   Bella,  who 


A  HAZAUD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  15 

babbled  at  him  with  a  voluble  pertness,  which  her 
brother  had  often  advised  her  parents  to  check  in 
her,  unless  they  wanted  her  to  be  universally 
despised. 

"  Papa, "she  shouted,  at  last,  "you  're  not  listening !" 

As  soon  as  possible  his  wife  told  the  children  they 
might  be  excused.  Then  she  asked,  "What  is  it, 
Basil  1 " 

"  What  is  what  1 "  he  retorted,  with  a  specious 
brightness  that  did  not  avail. 

"  What  is  on  your  mind  I " 

"  How  do  you  know  there 's  anything  1 " 

"  Your  kissing  me  so  when  you  came  in,  for  one 
thing." 

"Don't  I  always  kiss  you  when  I  come  in  ?  " 

"  Not  now.  I  suppose  it  isn't  necessary  any  more. 
Cela  va  sans  baiser." 

"  Yes,  I  guess  it 's  so  ;  we  get  along  without  the 
symbolism  now."  He  stopped,  but  she  knew  that 
he  had  not  finished. 

"  Is  it  about  your  business  1  Have  they  done 
anything  more." 

"  No ;  I  'm  still  in  the  dark.  I  don't  know 
whether  they  mean  to  supplant  me,  or  whether  they 
ever  did.  But  I  wasn't  thinking  about  that.  Ful- 
kerson  has  been  to  see  me  again." 

"  Fulkerson  1 "  She  brightened  at  the  name,  and 
March  smiled  too.  "  Why  didn't  you  bring  him  to 
dinner  1 " 

"  I  wanted  to  talk  with  you  Then  you  do  like 
him?" 


16  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  What  has  that  got  to  do  with  it,  Basil  1 " 

"  Nothing  !  nothing !  That  is,  he  was  boring 
away  about  that  scheme  of  his  again.  He 's  got  it 
into  definite  shape  at  last." 

"  What  shape  1 " 

March  outlined  it  for  her,  and  his  wife  seized 
its  main  features  with  the  intuitive  sense  of  affairs 
which  makes  women  such  good  business-men,  when 
they  will  let  it. 

"  It  sounds  perfectly  crazy,"  she  said  finally. 
"  But  it  mayn't  be.  The  only  thing  I  didn't  like 
about  Mr.  Fulkerson  was  his  always  wanting  to 
chance  things.  But  what  have  you  got  to  do  with 
it?" 

"  What  have  I  got  to  do  with  it  ?  "  March  toyed 
with  the  delay  the  question  gave  him ;  then  he  said, 
with  a  sort  of  deprecatory  laugh,  "  It  seems  that 
Fulkerson  has  had  his  eye  on  me  ever  since  we  met 
that  night  on  the  Quebec  boat.  I  opened  up  pretty 
freely  to  him,  as  you  do  to  a  man  you  never  expect 
to  see  again,  and  when  I  found  he  was  in  that  news- 
paper syndicate  business,  I  told  him  about  my  early 
literary  ambitions " 

"  You  can't  say  that  /  ever  discouraged  them, 
Basil,"  his  wife  put  in.  "I  should  have  been  will- 
ing, any  time,  to  give  up  everything  for  them." 

"  Well,  he  says  that  I  first  suggested  this  brilliant 
idea  to  him.  Perhaps  I  did;  I  don't  remember. 
When  he  told  me  about  his  supplying  literature 
to  newspapers  for  simultaneous  publication,  he  says 
I  asked,  '  Why  not  apply  the  principle  of  co-opera- 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  17 

tion  to  a  magazine,  and  run  it  in  the  interest  of  the 
contributors  1 '  and  that  set  him  to  thinking,  and  he 
thought  out  his  plan  of  a  periodical,  which  should 
pay  authors  and  artists  a  low  price  outright  for  their 
work,  and  give  them  a  chance  of  the  profits  in  the 
way  of  a  percentage.  After  all,  it  isn't  so  very  dif- 
ferent from  the  chances  an  author  takes  when  he 
publishes  a  book.  And  Fulkerson  thinks  that  the 
novelty  of  the  thing  would  pique  public  curiosity, 
if  it  didn't  arouse  public  sympathy.  And  the  long 
and  short  of  it  is,  Isabel,  that  he  wants  me  to  help 
edit  it." 

"  To  edit  it  ? "  His  wife  caught  her  breath,  and 
she  took  a  little  time  to  realise  the  fact,  while  she 
stared  hard  at  her  husband  to  make  sure  he  was  not 
joking. 

"  Yes.  He  says  he  owes  it  all  to  me ;  that  I  in- 
vented the  idea — the  germ — the  microbe." 

His  wife  had  now  realised  the  fact,  at  least  in  a 
degree  that  excluded  trifling  with  it.  "  That  is  very 
honourable  of  Mr.  Fulkerson ;  and  if  he  owes  it  to 
you,  it  was  the  least  he  could  do."  Having  recog- 
nised her  husband's  claim  to  the  honour  done  him, 
she  began  to  kindle  with  a  sense  of  the  honour 
itself,  and  the  value  of  the  opportunity.  "It's  a 
very  high  compliment  to  you,  Basil ;  a  very  high 
compliment.  And  you  could  give  up  this  wretched 
insurance  business  that  you  've  always  hated  so,  and 
that 's  making  you  so  unhappy  now  that  you  think 
they  're  going  to  take  it  from  you.  Give  it  up,  and 
take  Mr.  Fulkerson's  offer !  It 's  a  perfect  inter' 


18  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

position,  coming  just  at  this  time !  Why,  do  it ! 
Mercy!"  she  suddenly  arrested  herself,  "he  wouldn't 
expect  you  to  get  along  on  the  possible  profits  1 " 
Her  face  expressed  the  awfulness  of  the  notion. 

March  smiled  reassuringly,  and  waited  to  give 
himself  the  pleasure  of  the  sensation  he  meant  to 
give  her.  "  If  I  '11  make  striking  phrases  for  it  and 
edit  it  too,  he  '11  give  me  four  thousand  dollars." 

He  leaned  back  in  his  chair,  and  stuck  his  hands 
deep  into  his  pockets,  and  watched  his  wife's  face, 
luminous  with  the  emotions  that  flashed  through 
her  mind — doubt,  joy,  anxiety. 

"  Basil !  You  don't  mean  it !  Why,  take  it ! 
Take  it  instantly  \  Oh,  what  a  thing  to  happen ! 
Oh,  what  luck  !  But  you  deserve  it,  if  you  first 
suggested  it.  What  an  escape,  what  a  triumph  over 
all  those  hateful  insurance  people  !  0  Basil,  I  'm 
afraid  he  '11  change  his  mind  !  You  ought  to  have 
accepted  on  the  spot.  You  might  have  known  I 
would  approve,  and  you  could  so  easily  have  taken 
it  back  if  I  didn't.  Telegraph  him  now  !  Run  right 
out  with  the  despatch  !  Or  we  can  send  Tom  ! " 

In  these  imperatives  of  Mrs.  March's  there  was 
always  much  of  the  conditional.  She  meant  that 
he  should  do  what  she  said,  if  it  were  entirely  right ; 
and  she  never  meant  to  be  considered  as  having 
urged  him. 

"And  suppose  his  enterprise  went  wrong?"  her 
husband  suggested. 

"It  won't  go  wrong.  Hasn't  he  made  a  success 
of  his  syndicate  ? " 

"He  says  so — yes." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  I ORTUNES.  19 

"  Very  well,  then,  it  stands  to  reason  that  he  '11 
succeed  in  this,  too.  He  wouldn't  undertake  it  if 
he  didn't  know  it  would  succeed ;  he  must  have 
capital." 

"It  will  take  a  great  deal  to  get  such  a  thing 
going ;  and  even  if  he 's  got  an  Angel  behind 
him " 

She  caught  at  the  word  :  "  An  Angel  ? " 

"  It 's  what  the  theatrical  people  call  a  financial 
backer.  He  dropped  a  hint  oi  something  of  that 
kind." 

"Of  course,  he's  got  an  Angel,"  said  his  wife, 
promptly  adopting  the  word.  "  And  even  if  he 
hadn't,  still,  Basil,  I  should  be  willing  to  have  you 
risk  it.  The  risk  isn't  so  great,  is  it?  We 
shouldn't  be  ruined  if  it  failed  altogether.  With 
our  stocks  we  have  two  thousand  a  year,  anyway, 
and  we  could  pinch  through  on  that  till  you  got 
into  some  other  business  afterward,  especially  if 
we  'd  saved  something  out  of  your  salary  while  it 
lasted.  Basil,  I  want  you  to  trjT  it !  I  know  it  will 
give  you  a  new  lease  of  life  to  have  a  congenial 
occupation."  March  laughed,  bit  his  wife  persisted. 
"  I  'm  all  for  your  trying  it,  Basil ;  indeed  I  am. 
If  it 's  an  experiment,  you  can  give  it  up." 

"It  can  give  me  up,  too." 

"  Oh,  nonsense  !  I  guess  theie  's  not  much  fear  of 
that.  Now,  I  want  you  to  telegraph  Mr.  Fulkerson, 
so  that  he  '11  find  the  despatch  waiting  for  him 
when  he  gets  to  New  York.  I  '11  take  the  whole 
responsibility,  Basil,  and  I  '11  risk  all  the  conse- 
quences." 


III. 


MARCH'S  face  had  sobered  more  and  more  as  she 
followed  one  hopeful  burst  with  another,  and  now 
it  expressed  a  positive  pain.  But  he  forced  a  smile, 
and  said  :  "  There 's  a  little  condition  attached. 
Where  did  you  suppose  it  was  to  be  published  ?" 

"  Why,  in  Boston,  of  course.  Where  else  should 
it  be  published  1 " 

She  looked  at  him  for  the  intention  of  his  question 
so  searchingly  that  he  quite  gave  up  the  attempt  to 
be  gay  about  it.  "  No,"  he  said  gravely,  "  it 's  to 
be  published  in  New  York." 

She  fell  back  in  her  chair.  "  In  New  York  ?  " 
She  leaned  forward  over  the  table  toward  him,  as  if 
to  make  sure  that  she  heard  aright,  and  said,  with 
all  the  keen  reproach  that  he  could  have  expected, 
"  In  New  York,  Basil !  Oh,  how  could  you  have  let 
me  go  on  ? " 

He  had  a  sufficiently  rueful  face  in  owning,  "  I 
oughtn't  to  have  done  it,  but  I  got  started  wrong. 
I  couldn't  help  putting  the  best  foot  forward  at  first 
— or  as  long  as  the  whole  thing  was  in  the  air.  I 
didn't  know  that  you  would  take  so  much  to  the 
general  enterprise,  or  else  I  should  have  mentioned 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  21 

the  New  York  condition  at  once ;  but  of  course  that 
puts  an  end  to  it." 

"Oh,  of  course,"  she  assented  sadly.  "We 
couldn't  go  to  New  York." 

"  No,  I  know  that,"  he  said  ;  and  with  this  a  per- 
verse desire  to  tempt  her  to  the  impossibility  awoke 
in  him,  though  he  was  really  quite  cold  about  the 
affair  himself  now.  "  Fulkerson  thought  we  could 
get  a  nice  flat  in  New  York  for  about  what  the 
interest  and  taxes  came  to  here,  and  provisions  are 
cheaper.  But  I  should  rather  not  experiment  at  my 
time  of  life.  If  I  could  have  been  caught  younger, 
I  might-  have  been  inured  to  New  York,  but  I  don't 
believe  I  could  stand  it  now." 

"  How  I  hate  to  have  you  talk  that  way,  Basil  ! 
You  are  young  enough  to  try  anything — anywhere  ; 
but  you  know  I  don't  like  New  York.  I  don't 
approve  of  it.  It 's  so  big,  and  so  hideous  !  Of 
course  I  shouldn't  mind  that ;  but  I  've  always  lived 
in  Boston,  and  the  children  were  born  and  have  all 
their  friendships  and  associations  here."  She  added, 
with  the  helplessness  that  discredited  her  good-sense 
and  did  her  injustice,  "  I  have  just  got  them  both 
into  the  Friday  afternoon  class  at  Papanti's,  and  you 
know  how  difficult  that  is." 

March  could  not  fail  to  take  advantage  of  an  occa- 
sion like  this.  "  Well,  that  alone  ought  to  settle  it. 
Under  the  circumstances  it  would  be  flying  in  the 
face  of  Providence  to  leave  Boston.  The  mere  fact 
of  a  brilliant  opening  like  that  offered  me  on  The 
Microbe,  and  the  halcyon  future  which  Fulkerson 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

promises  if  we  '11  come  to  New  York,  is  as  dust  in 
the  balance  against  the  advantages  of  the  Friday 
afternoon  class." 

"  Basil,"  she  appealed  solemnly,  "  have  I  ever  in- 
terfered with  your  career  ?" 

"  I  never  had  any  for  you  to  interfere  with,  my 
dear." 

"  Basil !  Haven't  I  always  had  faith  in  you  ? 
And  don't  you  suppose  that  if  I  thought  it  would 
really  be  for  your  advancement,  I  would  go  to  New 
York  or  anywhere  with  you  V 

"  No,  my  dear,  I  don't,"  he  teased.  "  If  it  would 
be  for  my  salvation,  yes,  perhaps  ;  but  not  short  of 
that ;  and  I  should  have  to  prove  by  a  cloud  of  wit- 
nesses that  it  would  I  don't  blame  you.  I  wasn't 
born  in  Boston,  but  I  understand  how  you  feel. 
And  really,  my  deai,"  he  added,  without  irony,  "I 
never  seriously  thought  of  asking  you  to  go  to  New 
York.  I  was  dazzle  1  by  Fulkerson's  offer,  I  Jll  own 
that ;  but  his  choice  of  me  as  editor  sapped  my  con- 
fidence in  him." 

"  I  don't  like  to  hear  you  say  that,  Basil,"  she  en- 
treated. 

"Well,  of  course  there  were  mitigating  circum- 
stances. I  could  se)  that  Fulkerson  meant  to  keep 
the  whip-hand  himself,  and  that  was  reassuring. 
And  besides,  if  the  Reciprocity  Life  should  happen 
not  to  want  my  services  any  longer,  it  wouldn't  be 
quite  like  giving  up  a  certainty  ;  though,  as  a  matter 
of  business,  I  let  Fulkerson  get  that  impression ;  I 
felt  rather  sneaking  to  do  it.  But,  if  the  worst 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  23 

comes  to  the  worst,  I  can  look  about  for  something 
to  do  in  Boston ;  and,  anyhow,  people  don't  starve 
on  two  thousand  a  year,  though  it 's  convenient  to 
have  five.  The  fact  is,  I'm  too  old  to  change  so 
radically.  If  you  don't  like  my  saying  that,  then 
you  are,  Isabel,  and  so  are  the  children.  I've  no 
right  to  take  them  from  the  home  we  've  made,  and 
to  change  the  whole  course  of  their  lives,  unless  I 
can  assure  them  of  something,  and  I  can't  assure 
them  of  anything.  Boston  is  big  enough  for  us,  and 
it 's  certainly  prettier  than  New  York.  I  always  feel 
a  little  proud  of  hailing  from  Boston ;  my  pleasure 
in  the  place  mounts  the  further  I  get  away  from  it. 
But  I  do  appreciate  it,  my  dear,  I  've  no  more  desire 
to  leave  it  than  you  have.  You  may  be  sure  that  if 
you  don't  want  to  take  the  children  out  of  the 
Friday  afternoon  class,  I  don't  want  to  leave  my 
library  here,  and  all  the  ways  I  've  got  set  in.  We  '11 
keep  on.  Very  likely  the  company  won't  supplant 
me,  and  if  it  does,  and  Watkins  gets  the  place, 
he'll  give  me  a  subordinate  position  of  some  sort. 
Cheer  up,  Isabel !  I  have  put  Satan  and  his  angel, 
Fulkerson,  behind  me,  and  it 's  all  right.  Let 's  go 
in  to  the  children." 

He  came  round  the  table  to  Isabel,  where  she  sat 
in  a  growing  distraction,  and  lifted  her  by  the  waist 
from  her  chair. 

She  sighed  deeply.  "  Shall  we  tell  the  children 
about  it  ? " 

"  No.     What 's  the  use,  now  ? " 

"  There  wouldn't  be  any,"  she  assented.  When 
C 


24  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

they  entered  the  family  room,  where  the  boy  and 
girl  sat  on  either  side  of  the  lamp  working  out  the 
lessons  for  Monday  which  they  had  left  over  from 
the  day  before,  she  asked,  "  Children,  how  would 
you  like  to  live  in  New  York  1 " 

Bella  made  haste  to  get  in  her  word  first.  "And 
give  up  the  Friday  afternoon  class  ? "  she  wailed. 

Tom  growled  from  his  book,  without  lifting  his 
eyes,  "I  shouldn't  want  to  go  to  Columbia.  They 
haven't  got  any  dormitories,  and  you  have  to  board 
round  anywhere.  Are  you  going  to  New  York  1 " 
He  now  deigned  to  look  up  at  his  father. 

"  No,  Tom.  You  and  Bella  have  decided  me 
against  it.  Your  perspective  shows  the  affair  in 
its  true  proportions.  I  had  an  offer  to  go  to  New 
York,  but  I  Ve  refused  it." 


IV. 


MARCH'S  irony  fell  harmless  from  the  children's 
preoccupation  with  their  own  affairs,  but  he  knew 
that  his  wife  felt  it,  and  this  added  to  the  bitterness 
which  prompted  it.  He  blamed  her  for  letting  her 
provincial  narrowness  prevent  his  accepting  Fulker- 
son's  offer  quite  as  much  as  if  he  had  otherwise 
entirely  wished  to  accept  it.  His  world,  like  most 
worlds,  had  been  superficially  a  disappointment.  He 
was  no  richer  than  at  the  beginning,  though  in 
marrying  he  had  given  up  some  tastes,  some  prefer- 
ences, some  aspirations,  in  the  hope  of  indulging 
them  later,  with  larger  means  and  larger  leisure. 
His  wife  had  not  urged  him  to  do  it;  in  fact,  her 
pride,  as  she  said,  was  in  his  fitness  for  the  life  he 
had  renounced  ;  but  she  had  acquiesced,  and  they 
had  been  very  happy  together.  That  is  to  say,  they 
made  up  their  quarrels  or  ignored  them. 

They  often  accused  each  other  of  being  selfish 
and  indifferent,  but  she  knew  that  he  would  always 
sacrifice  himself  for  her  and  the  children ;  and  he, 
on  his  part,  with  many  gibes  and  mockeries,  wholly 
trusted  in  her.  They  had  grown  practically  tolerant 
of  each  other's  disagreeable  traits ;  and  the  danger 
VOL.  I.— 2 


26  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

that  really  threatened  them  was  that  they  should 
grow  too  well  satisfied  with  themselves,  if  not  with 
each  other.  They  were  not  sentimental,  they  were 
rather  matter-of-fact  in  their  motives ;  but  they 
had  both  a  sort  of  humorous  fondness  for  senti- 
mentality. They  liked  to  play  with  the  romantic, 
from  the  safe  vantage-ground  of  their  real  practi- 
cality, and  to  divine  the  poetry  of  the  commonplace. 
Their  peculiar  point  of  view  separated  them  from 
most  other  people,  with  whom  their  means  of  self- 
comparison  were  not  so  good  since  their  marriage  as 
before.  Then  they  had  travelled  and  seen  much  of 
the  world,  and  they  had  formed  tastes  which  they 
had  not  always  been  able  to  indulge,  but  of  which 
they  felt  that  the  possession  reflected  distinction  on 
them.  It  enabled  them  to  look  down  upon  those 
who  were  without  such  tastes ;  but  they  were  not 
ill-natured,  and  so  they  did  not  look  down  so  much 
with  contempt  as  with  amusement.  In  their  un- 
fashionable neighbourhood  they  had  the  fame  of 
being  not  exclusive  precisely,  but  very  much  wrapt 
up  in  themselves  and  their  children. 

Mrs.  March  was  reputed  to  be  very  cultivated, 
and  Mr.  March  even  more  so,  among  the  simpler 
folk  around  them.  Their  house  had  some  good 
pictures,  which  her  aunt  had  brought  home  from 
Europe  in  more  affluent  days,  and  it  abounded  in 
books  on  which  he  spent  more  than  he  ought 
They  had  beautified  it  in  every  way,  and  had  un- 
consciously taken  credit  to  themselves  for  it.  They 
felt,  with  a  glow  almost  of  virtue,  how  perfectly  it 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  27 

fitted  their  lives  and  their  children's,  and  they 
believed  that  somehow  it  expressed  their  characters 
— that  it  was  like  them.  They  went  out  very  little  ; 
she  remained  shut  up  in  its  refinement,  working  the 
good  of  her  own';  and  he  went  to  his  business,  and 
hurried  back  to  forget  it,  and  dream  his  dream  of 
intellectual  achievement  in  the  flattering  atmosphere 
of  her  sympathy.  He  could  not  conceal  from  him- 
self that  his  divided  life  was  somewhat  like  Charles 
Lamb's,  and  there  were  times  when,  as  he  had  ex- 
pressed to  Fulkerson,  he  believed  that  its  division 
was  favourable  to  the  freshness  of  his  interest  in 
literature.  It  certainly  kept  it  a  high  privilege,  a 
sacred  refuge.  Now  and  then  he  wrote  something, 
and  got  it  printed  after  long  delays,  and  when  they 
met  on  the  St.  Lawrence,  Fulkerson  had  some  of 
March's  verses  in  his  pocket-book,  which  he  had 
cut  out  of  a  stray  newspaper  and  carried  about  for 
years,  because  they  pleased  his  fancy  so  much  ;  they 
formed  an  immediate  bond  of  union  between  the 
men  when  their  authorship  was  traced  and  owned, 
and  this  gave  a  pretty  colour  of  romance  to  their 
acquaintance.  But  for  the  most  part,  March  was 
satisfied  to  read.  He  was  proud  of  reading  criti- 
cally, and  he  kept  in  the  current  of  literary  interests 
and  controversies.  It  all  seemed  to  him,  and  to  his 
wife  at  second-hand,  very  meritorious  ;  he  could  not 
help  contrasting  his  life  and  its  inner  elegance  with 
that  of  other  men  who  had  no  such  resources.  He 
thought  that  he  was  not  arrogant  about  it,  because 
he  did  full  justice  to  the  good  qualities  of  those 


28  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

other  people ;  he  congratulated  himself  upon  the 
democratic  instincts  which  enabled  him  to  do  this ; 
and  neither  he  nor  his  wife  supposed  that  they  were 
selfish  persons.  On  the  contrary,  they  were  very 
sympathetic ;  there  was  no  good  cause  that  they  did 
not  wish  well ;  they  had  a  generous  scorn  of  all 
kinds  of  narrow-heartedness ;  if  it  had  ever  come 
into  their  way  to  sacrifice  themselves  for  others, 
they  thought  they  would  have  done  so,  but  they 
never  asked1  why  it  had  not  come  in  their  way. 
They  were  very  gentle  and  kind,  even  when  most 
elusive  ;  and  they  taught  their  children  to  loathe  all 
manner  of  social  cruelty.  March  was  of  so  watchful 
a  conscience  in  some  respects  that  he  denied  himself 
the  pensive  pleasure  of  lapsing  into  the  melancholy 
of  unfulfilled  aspirations  ;  but  he  did  not  see  that  if 
he  had  abandoned  them,  it  had  been  for  what  he 
held  dearer ;  generally  he  felt  as  if  he  had  turned 
from  them  with  a  high  altruistic  aim.  The  practical 
expression  of  his  life  was  that  it  was  enough  to 
provide  well  for  his  family;  to  have  cultivated 
tastes,  and  to  gratify  them  to  the  extent  of  his 
means ;  to  be  rather  distinguished,  even  in  the 
simplification  of  his  desires.  He  believed,  and  his 
wife  believed,  that  if  the  time  ever  came  when  he 
really  wished  to  make  a  sacrifice  to  the  fulfilment  of 
the  aspirations  so  long  postponed,  she  would  be 
ready  to  join  with  heart  and  hand. 

When  he  went  to  her  room  from  his  library, 
where  she  left  him  the  whole  evening  with  the 
children,  he  found  her  before  the  glass  thoughtfully 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  29 

removing  the  first  dismantling  pin  from  her  back 
hair. 

"  I  can't  help  feeling,"  she  grieved  into  the  mirror, 
"  that  it 's  I  who  keep  you  from  accepting  that  offer. 
I  know  it  is  !  I  could  go  West  with  you,  or  into  a 
new  country — anywhere  ;  but  New  York  terrifies 
me.  J  don't  like  New  York,  I  never  did ;  it  dis- 
heartens and  distracts  me  ;  I  can't  find  myself  in  it; 
I  shouldn't  know  how  to  shop.  I  know  I  'm  foolish 
and  narrow  and  provincial,"  she  went  on ;  "  but  I 
could  never  have  any  inner  quiet  in  New  York ;  I 
couldn't  live  in  the  spirit  there.  I  suppose  people 
do.  It  can't  be  that  all  those  millions " 

"  Oh,  not  so  bad  as  that ! "  March  interposed, 
laughing.  "  There  aren't  quite  two." 

"I  thought  there  were  four  or  five.  Well,  no 
matter.  You  see  what  I  am,  Basil.  I  'm  terribly 
limited.  I  couldn't  make  my  sympathies  go  round 
two  million  people;  I  should  be  wretched.  I  sup- 
pose I'm  standing  in  the  way  of  your  highest 
interest,  but  I  can't  help  it.  We  took  each  other 
for  better  or  worse,  and  you  must  try  to  bear  with 
me "  She  broke  off  and  began  to  cry. 

"  Stop  it ! "  shouted  March.  "  I  tell  you  I  never 
cared  anything  for  Fulkerson's  scheme  or  enter- 
tained it  seriously,  and  I  shouldn't,  if  he  'd  pro- 
posed to  carry  it  out  in  Boston."  This  was  not 
quite  true  :  but  in  the  retrospect  it  seemed  suffi- 
ciently so  for  the  purposes  of  argument.  "Don't 
eay  another  word  about  it.  The  thing 's  over  now, 
and  I  don't  want  to  think  of  it  any  more.  We 


30  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

couldn't  change  its  nature  if  we  talked  all  night. 
But  I  want  you  to  understand  that  it  isn't  your 
limitations  that  are  in  the  way.  It's  mine.  I 
shouldn't  have  the  courage  to  take  such  a  place ; 
I  don't  think  I  'm  fit  for  it ;  and  that 's  the  long 
and  short  of  it." 

"Oh,  you  don't  know  how  it  hurts  me  to  haye  you 
say  that,  Basil." 

The  next  morning,  as  they  sat  together  at  break- 
fast, without  the  children,  whom  they  let  lie  late  on 
Sunday,  Mrs.  March  said  to  her  husband,  silent  over 
his  fish-balls  and  baked  beans  :  "  We  will  go  to  New 
York.  I  Ve  decided  it." 

"  Well,  it  takes  two  to  decide  that,"  March  re- 
torted. "  We  are  not  going  to  New  York." 

"  Yes,  we  are.    I  've  thought  it  out.    Now,  listen." 

"  Oh,  I  'm  willing  to  listen,"  he  consented  airily. 

"  You  Ve  always  wanted  to  get  out  of  the  insur- 
ance business,  and  now  with  that  fear  of  being 
turned  out  which  you  have,  you  mustn't  neglect 
this  offer.  I  suppose  it  has  its  risks,  but  it's  a 
risk  keeping  on  as  we  are;  and  perhaps  you  will 
make  a  great  success  of  it.  I  do  want  you  to  try, 
Basil.  If  I  could  once  feel  that  you  had  fairly  seen 
what  you  could  do  in  literature,  I  should  die  happy." 

"  Not  immediately  after,  I  hope,"  he  suggested, 
taking  the  second  cup  of  coffee  she  had  been  pour- 
ing out  for  him.  "  And  Boston  ?  " 

"We  needn't  make  a  complete  break.  We  can 
keep  this  place  for  the  present,  anyway ;  we  could 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  31 

let  it  for  the  winter,  and  come  back  in  the  summer 
next  year.  It  would  be  change  enough  from  New 
York." 

"  Fulkerson  and  I  hadn't  got  as  far  as  to  talk  of  a 
vacation." 

"  No  matter.  The  children  and  I  could  come. 
And  if  you  didn't  like  New  York,  or  the  enterprise 
failed,  you  could  get  into  something  in  Boston 
again ;  and  we  have  enough  to  live  on  till  you  did. 
Yes,  Basil,  I  'm  going." 

"  I  can  see  by  the  way  your  chin  trembles  that 
nothing  could  stop  you.  You  may  go  to  New  York 
if  you  wsh,  Isabel,  but  I  shall  stay  here." 

"  Be  serious,  Basil.     I  'm  in  earnest." 

"  Serious  1  If  I  were  any  more  serious  I  should 
shed  tears.  Come,  my  dear,  I  know  what  you  mean, 
and  if  I  had  my  heart  set  on  this  thing — Fulkerson 
always  calls  it  'this  thing' — I  would  cheerfully 
accept  any  sacrifice  you  could  make  to  it.  But  I  'd 
rather  not  offer  you  up  on  a  shrine  I  don't  feel  any 
particular  faith  in.  I  'm  very  comfortable  where  I 
am ;  that  is,  I  know  just  where  the  pinch  comes,  and 
if  it  comes  harder,  why,  I  've  got  used  to  bearing  that 
kind  of  pinch.  I  'm  too  old  to  change  pinches." 

"  Now,  that  does  decide  me." 

"It  decides  me,  too." 

"I  will  take  all  the.  responsibility,  Basil,"  she 
pleaded. 

"  Oh  yes  ;  but  you  '11  hand  it  back  to  me  as  soon 
as  you've  carried  your  point  with  it.  There's 
nothing  mean  about  you,  Isabel,  where  responsibility 


32  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

is  concerned.  No;  if  I  do  this  thing — Fulkerson 
again  !  I  can't  get  away  from  '  this  thing ' ;  it 's 
ominous — I  must  do  it  because  I  want  to  do  it,  and 
not  because  you  wish  that  you  wanted  me  to  do  it. 
I  understand  your  position,  Isabel,  and  that  you  're 
really  acting  from  a  generous  impulse,  but  there's 
nothing  so  precarious  at  our  time  of  life  as  a  generous 
impulse.  When  we  were  younger  we  could  stand 
it ;  we  could  give  way  to  it  and  take  the  consequences. 
But  now  we  can't  bear  it.  We  must  act  from  cold 
reason  even  in  the  ardour  of  self-sacrifice." 

"  Oh,  as  if  you  did  that ! "  his  wife  retorted. 

"  Is  that  any  cause  why  you  shouldn't  ? "  She 
could  not  say  that  it  was,  and  he  went  on  trium- 
phantly :  "  No,  I  won't  take  you  away  from  the 
only  safe  place  on  the  planet,  and  plunge  you  into 
the  most  perilous,  and  then  have  you  say  in  your> 
revulsion  of  feeling  that  you  were  all  against  it  from 
the  first,  and  you  gave  way  because  you  saw  I  had 
my  heart  set  on  it."  He  supposed  he  was  treating 
the  matter  humorously,  but  in  this  sort  of  banter 
between  husband  and  wife  there  is  always  much 
more  than  the  joking.  March  had  seen  some  pretty 
feminine  inconsistencies  and  trepidations  which  once 
charmed  him  in  his  wife  hardening  into  traits  of 
middle-age,  which  were  very  like  those  of  less 
interesting  older  women.  .  The  sight  moved  him 
with  a  kind  of  pathos,  but  he  felt  the  result  hinder- 
ing and  vexatious. 

She  now  retorted  that  if  he  did  not  choose  to  take 
her  at  her  word  he  need  not,  but  that  whatever  he 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  33 

did  she  should  have  nothing  to  reproach  herself  with ; 
and,  at  least,  he  could  not  say  that  she  had  trapped 
him  into  anything. 

"  What  do  you^mean  by  trapping  ? "  he  demanded. 

"  I  don't  know  what  you  call  it,"  she  answered ; 
"  but  when  you  get  me  to  commit  myself  to  a  thing 
by  leaving  out  the  most  essential  point,  /  call  it 
trapping." 

"  I  wonder  you  stop  at  trapping,  if  you  think  I 
got  you  to  favour  Fulkerson's  scheme,  and  then 
sprung  New  York  on  you.  I  don't  suppose  you 
do,  though.  But  I  guess  we  won't  talk  about  it 
any  more." 

He  went  out  for  a  long  walk,  and  she  went  to 
her  room.  They  lunched  silently  together  in  the 
presence  of  their  children,  who  knew  that  they 
had  been  quarrelling,  but  were  easily  indifferent 
to  the  fact,  as  children  get  to  be  in  such  cases ; 
nature  defends  their  youth,  and  the  unhappiness 
which  they  behold  does  not  infect  them.  In  the 
evening,  after  the  boy  and  girl  had  gone  to  bed, 
the  father  and  mother  resumed  their  talk.  He 
would  have  liked  to  take  it  up  at  the  point  from 
which  it  wandered  into  hostilities,  for  he  felt  ifc 
lamentable  that  a  matter  which  so  seriously  con- 
cerned them  should  be  confused  in  the  fumes  of 
senseless  anger ;  and  he  was  willing  to  make  a  tacit 
acknowledgment  of  his  own  error  by  recurring  to 
the  question,  but  she  would  not  be  content  with 
this,  and  he  had  to  concede  explicitly  to  her  weak- 
ness that  she  really  meant  it  when  she  had  asked 
2* 


34  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

him  to  accept  Fulkerson's  offer.  He  said  he  knew 
that ;  and  he  began  soberly  to  talk  over  their  pro- 
spects in  the  event  of  their  going  to  New  York. 

"  Oh,  I  see  you  are  going  ! "  she%  twitted. 

"  I  'm  going  to  stay,"  he  answered,  "  and  let  them 
turn  me  out  of  my  agency  here  ! "  and  in  this  bitter- 
ness their  talk  ended. 


V. 


His  wife  made  no  attempt  to  renew  their  talk 
before  March  went  to  his  business  in  the  morning, 
and  they  parted  in  dry  offence.  Their  experience 
was  that  these  things  always  came  right  of  them- 
selves at  last,  and  they  usually  let  them.  He  knew 
that  she  had  really  tried  to  consent  to  a  thing  that 
was  repugnant  to  her,  and  in  his  heart  he  gave  her 
more  credit  for  the  effort  than  he  had  allowed  her 
openly.  She  knew  that  she  had  made  it  with  the 
reservation  he  accused  her  of,  and  that  he  had  a 
right  to  feel  sore  at  what  she  could  ,not  help.  But 
he  left  her  to  brood  over  his  ingratitude,  and  she- 
suffered  him  to  go  heavy  and  unfriended  to  meet 
the  chances  of  the  day.  He  said  to  himself  that 
if  she  had  assented  cordially  to  the  conditions  of 
Fulkerson's  offer,  he  would  have  had  the  courage  to 
take  all  the  other  risks  himself,  and  would  have  had 
the  satisfaction  of  resigning  his  place.  As  it  was, 
he  must  wait  till  he  was  removed ;  and  he  figured 
with  bitter  pleasure  the  pain  she  would  feel  when  he 
came  home  some. day  and  told  her  he  had  been  sup- 
planted, after  it  was  too  late  to  close  with  Fulkerson. 

He  found  a  letter  on  his  desk  from  the  secretary, 


36  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Dictated,"  in  type-writing,  which  briefly  informed 
him  that  Mr.  Hut  boll,  «1»~  Inspector  of  Agencies, 
would  be  in  Boston  on  Wednesday,  and  would  call 
at  his  office  during  the  forenoon.  The  letter  was 
not  different  in  tone  from  many  that  he  had  formerly 
received ;  but  the  visit  announced  was  out  of  the 
usual  order,  and  March  believed  he  read  his  fate  in 
it.  During  the  eighteen  years  of  his  connection 
with  it — first  as  a  subordinate  in  the  Boston  office, 
and  finally  as  its  general  agent  there — he  had  seen 
a  good  many  changes  in  the  Reciprocity ;  presidents, 
vice-presidents,  actuaries,  and  general  agents  had 
come  and  gone,  but  there  had  always  seemed  to  be 
a  recognition  of  his  efficiency,  or  at  least  sufficiency, 
and  there  had  never  been  any  manner  of  trouble,  no 
question  of  accounts,  no  apparent  dissatisfaction 
with  his  management,  until  latterly,  when  there  had 
begun  to  come  from  headquarters  some  suggestions 
of  enterprise  in  certain  ways,  which  gave  him  his 
first  suspicions  of  his  clerk  Watkins's  willingness  to 
succeed  him ;  they  embodied  some  of  Watkins's 
ideas.  The  things  proposed  seemed  to  March  un- 
dignified, and  even  vulgar ;  he  had  never  thought 
himself  wanting  in  energy,  though  probably  he  had 
left  the  business  to  take  its  own  course  in  the  old 
lines  more  than  he  realised.  Things  had  always 
gone  so  smoothly  that  he  had  sometimes  fancied  a 
peculiar  regard  for  him  in  the  management,  which 
he  had  the  weakness  to  attribute  to  an  appreciation 
of  what  he  occasionally  did  in  literature,  though  in 
saner  moments  he  felt  how  impossible  this  was. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  37 

Beyond  a  reference  from  Mr.  Hubbell  to  some  piece 
of  March's,  which  had  happened  to  meet  his  eye,  no 
one  in  the  management  ever  gave  a  sign  of  con- 
sciousness that  their  service  was  adorned  by  an 
obscure  literary  man  ;  and  Mr.  Hubbell  himself  had 
the  effect  of  regarding  the  excursions  of  March's  pen 
as  a  sort  of  joke,  and  of  winking  at  them,  as  he 
might  have  winked  if  once  in  a  way  he  had  found 
him  a  little  the  gayer  for  dining. 

March  wore  through  the  day  gloomily,  but  he  had 
it  on  his  conscience  not  to  show  any  resentment 
toward  Watkins,  whom  he  suspected  of  wishing  to 
supplant  him,  and  even  of  working  to  do  so. 
Through  this  self-denial  he  reached  a  better  mind 
concerning  his  wife.  He  determined  not  to  make 
her  suffer  needlessly,  if  the  worst  came  to  the  worst ; 
she  would  suffer  enough,  at  the  best,  and  till  the 
worst  came  he  would  spare  her,  and  not  say  any- 
thing about  the  letter  he  had  got. 

But  when  they  met,  her  first  glance  divined  that 
something  had  happened,  and  her  first  question 
frustrated  his  generous  intention.  He  had  to  tell 
her  about  the  letter.  She  would  not  allow  that  it 
had  any  significance ;  but  she  wished  him  to  make 
an  end  of  his  anxieties,  and  forestall  whatever  it 
might  portend  by  resigning  his  place  at  once.  She 
said  she  was  quite  ready  to  go  to  New  York ;  she 
had  been  thinking  it  all  over,  and  now  she  really 
wanted  to  go.  He  answered,  soberly,  that  he  had 
thought  it  over,  too ;  and  he  did  not  wish  to  leave 
Boston,  where  he  had  lived  so  long,  or  try  a  new 


38  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

way  of  life  if  he  could  help  it.  He  insisted  that  he 
was  quite  selfish  in  this ;  in  their  concessions  their 
quarrel  vanished ;  they  agreed  that  whatever  hap- 
pened would  be  for  the  best ;  and  the  next  day  he 
went  to  his  office  fortified  for  any  event. 

His  destiny,  if  tragical,  presented  itself  with  an 
aspect  which  he  might  have  found  comic  if  it  had 
been  another's  destiny.  Mr.  Hubbell  brought 
March's  removal,  softened  in  the  guise  of  a  promo- 
tion. The  management  at  New  York,  it  appeared, 
had  acted  upon  a  suggestion  of  Mr.  Hubbell's,  and 
now  authorised  him  to  offer  March  the  editorship 
of  the  monthly  paper  published  in  the  interest  of 
the  company ;  his  office  Avould  include  the  author- 
ship of  circulars  and  leaflets,  in  behalf  of  life  insur- 
ance, and  would  give  play  to  the  literary  talent 
which  Mr.  Hubbell  had  brought  to  the  attention  of 
the  management ;  his  salary  would  be  nearly  as 
much  as  at  present,  but  the  work  would  not  take 
his  whole  time,  and  in  a  place  like  New  York  he 
could  get  a  great  deal  of  outside  writing,  which  they 
would  not  object  to  his  doing. 

Mr.  Hubbell  seemed  so  sure  of  his  acceptance  of 
a  place  in  every  way  congenial  to  a  man  of  literary 
tastes,  that  March  was  afterward  sorry  he  dismissed 
the  proposition  with  obvious  irony,  and  had  need- 
lessly hurt  Hubbell's  feelings ;  but  Mrs.  March  had 
no  such  regrets.  She  was  only  afraid  that  he  had 
not  made  his  rejection  contemptuous  enough.  "  And 
now,"  she  said,  "  telegraph  Mr.  Fulkerson,  and  we 
will  go  at  once." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  39 

"I  suppose  I  could  still  get  Watkins's  former 
place,"  March  suggested. 

"  Never ! "  she  retorted.     "  Telegraph  instantly  ! " 

They  were  only  afraid  now  that  Fulkerson  might 
have  changed  his  mind,  and  they  had  a  wretched 
day  in  which  they  heard  nothing  from  him.  It 
ended  with  his  answering  March's  telegram  in 
person.  They  were  so  glad  of  his  coming,  and  so 
touched  by  his  satisfaction  with  his  bargain,  that 
they  laid  all  the  facts  of  the  case  before  him.  He 
entered  fully  into  March's  sense  of  the  joke  latent 
in  Mr.  Hubbell's  proposition ;  and  he  tried  to  make 
Mrs.  March  believe  that  he  shared  her  resentment 
of  the  indignity  offered  her  husband. 

March  made  a  show  of  willingness  to  release  him 
in  view  of  the  changed  situation,  saying  that  he 
held  him  to  nothing.  Fulkerson  laughed,  and 
asked  him  how  soon  he  thought  he  could  come 
on  to  New  York  He  refused  to  reopen  the  ques- 
tion of  March's  fitness  with  him ;  he  said  they  had 
gone  into  that  thoroughly,  but  he  recurred  to  it 
with  Mrs.  March,  and  confirmed  her  belief  in  his 
good-sense  on  all  points.  She  had  been  from  the 
first  moment  defiantly  confident,  of  her  husband's 
ability,  but  till  she  had  talked  the  matter  over 
with  Fulkerson,  she  was  secretly  not  sure  of  it ; 
or,  at  least,  she  was  not  sure  that  March  was  not 
right  in  distrusting  himself.  When  she  clearly  un- 
derstood, now,  what  Fulkerson  intended,  she  had  no 
longer  a  doubt.  He  explained  how  the  enterprise 

differed  from  others,   and   how  he  needed   for  its 
D 


40  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

direction  a  man  who  combined  general  business 
experience  and  business  ideas  with  a  love  for  the 
thing,  and  a  natural  aptness  for  it.  He  did  not 
want  a  young  man,  and  yet  he  wanted  youth — its 
freshness,  its  zest — such  as  March  would  feel  in  a 
thing  he  could  put  his  whole  heart  into.  He  would 
not  run  in  ruts,  like  an  old  fellow  who  had  got  hack- 
neyed ;  he  would  not  have  any  hobbies ;  he  would 
not  have  any  friends  nor  any  enemies.  Besides,  he 
would  have  to  meet  people,  and  March  was  a  man 
that  people  took  to ;  she  knew  that  herself ;  he  had 
a  kind  of  charm.  The  editorial  management  was 
going  to  be  kept  in  the  background,  as  far  as  the 
public  was  concerned;  the  public  was  to  suppose  that 
the  thing  ran  itself.  Fulkerson  did  not  care  for  a 
great  literary  reputation  in  his  editor — he  implied 
that  March  had  a  very  pretty  little  one.  At  the 
same  time  the  relations  between  the  contributors 
and  the  management  were  to  be  much  more  inti- 
mate than  usual.  Fulkerson  felt  his  personal  dis- 
qualification for  working  the  thing  socially,  and  he 
counted  upon  Mr.  March  for  that ;  that  was  to  say, 
he  counted  upon  Mrs.  March. 

She  protested  he  must  not  count  upon  her ;  but  it 
by  no  means  disabled  Fulkerson 's  judgment  in  her 
view  that  March  really  seemed  more  than  anything 
else  a  fancy  of  his.  He  had  been  a  fancy  of  hers ; 
and  the  sort  of  affectionate  respect  with  which  Ful- 
kerson spoke  of  him  laid  for  ever  some  doubt  she  had 
of  the  fineness  of  Fulkerson's  manners,  and  recon- 
ciled her  to  the  graphic  slanginess  of  his  speech. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  41 

The  affair  was  now  irretrievable,  but  she  gave 
her  approval  to  it  as  superbly  as  if  it  were  submitted 
in  its  inception.  Only,  Mr.  Fulkerson  must  not  sup- 
pose she  should  ever  like  New  York.  She  would 
not  deceive  him  on  that  point.  She  never  should 
like  it.  She  did  not  conceal,  either,  that  she  did 
not  like  taking  the  children  out  of  the  Friday  even- 
ing class ;  and  she  did  not  believe  that  Tom  would 
ever  be  reconciled  to  going  to  Columbia.  She  took 
courage  from  Fulkerson's  suggestion  that  it  was  pos- 
sible for  Tom  to  come  to  Harvard  even  from  New 
York ;  and  she  heaped  him  with  questions  concern- 
ing the  domiciliation  of  the  family  in  that  city.  He 
tried  to  know  something  about  the  matter,  and  he 
succeeded  in  seeming  interested  in  points  necessarily 
indifferent  to  him. 


VL 


IN  the  uprooting  and  transplanting  of  their  home 
that  followed,  Mrs.  March  often  trembled  before 
distant  problems  and  possible  contingencies,  but  she 
was  never  troubled  by  present  difficulties.  She  kept 
up  with  tireless  energy ;  and  in  the  moments  of  de- 
jection and  misgiving  which  harassed  her  husband 
she  remained  dauntless,  and  put  heart  into  him  when 
he  had  lost  it  altogether. 

She  arranged  to  leave  the  children  in  the  house 
with  the  servants,  while  she  went  on  with  March  to 
look  up  a  dwelling  of  some  sort  in  New  York.  It 
made  him  sick  to  think  of  it ;  and  when  it  came  to 
the  point,  he  would  rather  have  given  up  the  whole 
enterprise.  She  had  to  nerve  him  to  it,  to  repre- 
sent more  than  once  that  now  they  had  no  choice 
but  to  make  this  experiment.  Every  detail  of  part- 
ing was  anguish  to  him.  He  got  consolation  out  of 
the  notion  of  letting  the  house  furnished  for  the 
winter ;  that  implied  their  return  to  it ;  but  it  cost 
him  pangs  of  the  keenest  misery  to  advertise  it ;  and 
when  a  tenant  was  actually  found,  it  was  all  he 
could  do  to  give  him  the  lease.  He  tried  his  wife's 
love  and  patience  as  a  man  must  to  whom  the  future 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  43 

is  easy  in  the  mass,  but  terrible  as  it  translates  itself 
piecemeal  into  the  present.  He  experienced  remorse 
in  the  presence  of  inanimate  things  he  was  going  to 
leave  as  if  they  had  sensibly  reproached  him,  and  an 
anticipative  homesickness  that  seemed  to  stop  his 
heart.  Again  and  again  his  wife  had  to  make  him 
reflect  that  his  depression  was  not  prophetic.  She 
convinced  him  of  what  he  already  knew ;  and  per- 
suaded him  against  his  knowledge  that  he  could  be 
keeping  an  eye  out  for  something  to  take  hold  of  in 
Boston  if  they  could  not  stand  New  York.  She 
ended  by  telling  him  that  it  was  too  bad  to  make 
her  comfort  him  in  a  trial  that  was  really  so  much 
more  a  trial  to  her.  She  had  to  support  him  in  a 
last  access  of  despair  on  their  way  to  the  Albany 
depot  the  morning  they  started  to  New  York ;  but 
when  the  final  details  had  been  dealt  with,  the 
tickets  bought,  the  trunks  checked,  and  the  hand- 
bags hung  up  in  their  car,  and  the  future  had  massed 
itself  again  at  a  safe  distance  and  was  seven  hours 
and  two  hundred  miles  away,  his  spirits  began  to 
rise  and  hers  to  sink.  He  would  have  been  willing 
to  celebrate  the  taste,  the  domestic  refinement  of  the 
ladies'  Avaiting-room  in  the  depot,  where  they  had 
spent  a  quarter  of  an  hour  before  the  train  started. 
He  said  he  did  not  believe  there  was  another  station 
in  the  world  where  mahogany  rocking-chairs  were  pro- 
vided ;  that  the  dull  red  warmth  of  the  walls  was  as 
cosey  as  an  evening-lamp,  and  that  he  always  hoped 
to  see  a  fire  kindled  on  that  vast  hearth,  and  under 
that  aesthetic  mantel,  but  he  supposed  now  he  never 


44  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

should.  He  said  it  was  all  very  different  from  tnat 
tunnel,  the  old  Albany  depot,  where  they  had  waited 
the  morning  they  went  to  New  York  when  they 
were  starting  on  their  wedding  journey. 

"  The  morning,  Basil ! "  cried  his  wife.  "  We  went 
at  night ;  and  we  were  going  to  take  the  boat,  but 
it  stormed  so  ! "  She  gave  him  a  glance  of  such 
reproach  that  he  could  not  answer  anything,  and 
now  she  asked  him  whether  he  supposed  their  cook 
and  second  girl  would  be  contented  with  one  of  those 
dark  holes  where  they  put  girls  to  sleep  in  New 
York  flats,  and  what  she  should  do  if  Margaret, 
especially,  left  her.  He  ventured  to  suggest  that 
Margaret  would  probably  like  the  city ;  but  if  she 
left,  there  were  plenty  of  other  girls  to  be  had  in 
New  York.  She  replied  that  there  were  none  she 
could  trust,  and  that  she  knew  Margaret  would  not 
stay.  He  asked  her  why  she  took  her,  then  ;  why 

he  did  not  give  her  up  at  once ;  and  she  answered 
that  it  would  he  inhuman  to  give  her  up  just  in  the 
edge  of  the  winter.  She  had  promised  to  keep  her ; 
and  Margaret  was  pleased  with  the  notion  of  going  to 
New  York,  where  she  had  a  cousin. 

"  Then  perhaps  she  '11  be  pleased  with  the  notion 
of  staying,"  he  said. 

"  Oh,  much  you  know  about  it ! "  she  retorted ; 
and  in  view  of  the  hypothetical  difficulty  and  his 
want  of  sympathy,  she  fell  into  a  gloom,  from  which 
she  roused  herself  at  last  by  declaring  that  if  there 
was  nothing  else  in  the  flat  they  took,  there  should 

be  a  light  kitchen  and  a  bright  sunny  bedroom  for 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  45 

Margaret.  He  expressed  the  belief  that  they  could 
easily  find  such  a  flat  as  that,  and  she  denounced  his 
fatal  optimism,  which  buoyed  him  up  in  the  absence 
of  an  undertaking,  and  let  him  drop  into  the  depths 
of  despair  in  its  presence. 

He  owned  this  defect  of  temperament,  but  he  said 
that  it  compensated  the  opposite  in  her  character. 
"  I  suppose  that 's  one  of  the  chief  uses  of  marriage  ; 
people  supplement  each  other,  and  form  a  pretty 
fair  sort  of  human  being  together.  The  only  draw- 
back to  the  theory  is  that  unmarried  people  seem 
each  as  complete  and  whole  as  a  married  pair." 

She  refused  to  be  amused  ;  she  turned  her  face  to 
the  window  and  put  her  handkerchief  up  under  her 
veil. 

It  was  not  till  the  dining-car  was  attached  to  their 
train  that  they  were  both  able  to  escape  for  an  hour 
into  the  care-free  mood  of  their  earlier  travels,  when 
they  were  so  easily  taken  out  of  themselves.  The 
time  had  been  when  they  could  have  found  enough 
in  the  conjectural  fortunes  and  characters  of  their 
fellow-passengers  to  occupy  them.  This  phase  of 
their  youth  had  lasted  long,  and  the  world  was  still 
full  of  novelty  and  interest  for  them;  but  it  re- 
quired all  the  charm  of  the  dining-car  now  to  lay 
the  anxieties  that  beset  them.  It  was  so  potent  for 
the  moment,  however,  that  they  could  take  an  objec- 
tive view  at  their  sitting  cosily  down  there  together, 
as  if  they  had  only  themselves  in  the  world.  They 
wondered  Avhat  the  children  were  doing,  the  chil- 
dren who  possessed  them  so  intensely  when  present, 


46  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

and  now,  by  a  fantastic  operation  of  absence,  seemed 
almost  non-existent.  They  tried  to  be  homesick  for 
them,  but  failed  ;  they  recognised  with  comfortable 
self-abhorrence  that  this  was  terrible,  but  owned  a 
fascination  in  being  alone ;  at  the  same  time  they 
could  not  imagine  how  people  felt  who  never  had 
any  children.  They  contrasted  the  luxury  of  din- 
ing that  way,  with  every  advantage  except  a  band 
of  music,  and  the  old  way  of  rushing  out  to  snatch 
a  fearful  joy  at  the  lunch-counters  of  the  Worcester 
and  Springfield  and  New  Haven  stations.  They 
had  not  gone  often  to  New  York  since  their  wed- 
ding journey,  but  they  had  gone  often  enough  to 
have  noted  the  change  from  the  lunch-counter  to 
the  lunch-basket  brought  in  the  train,  from  which 
you  could  subsist  with  more  ease  and  dignity,  but 
seemed  destined  to  a  superabundance  of  pickles, 
whatever  you  ordered. 

They  thought  well  of  themselves  now  that  they 
could  be  both  critical  and  tolerant  of  flavours  not 
very  sharply  distinguished  from  one  another  in 
their  dinner,  and  they  lingered  over  their  coffee 
and  watched  the  autumn  landscape  through  the 
windows. 

"  Not  quite  so  loud  a  pattern  of  calico  this  year," 
he  said,  with  patronising  forbearance  toward  the 
painted  woodlands  whirling  by.  "Do  you  see  how 
the  foreground  next  the  train  rushes  from  us 
and  the  background  keeps  ahead  of  us,  while  the 
middle  distance  seems  stationary  1  I  don't  think  I 
ever  noticed  that  effect  before.  There  ought  to  be 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  47 

something  literary  in  it :  retreating  past  and  advanc- 
ing future,  and  deceitfully  permanent  present: 
something  like  that  1 " 

His  wife  brushed  some  crumbs  from  her  lap 
before  rising.  "Yes.  You  mustn't  waste  any  of 
these  ideas  now." 

"  Oh  no ;  it  would  be  money  out  of  Fulkerson's 
pocket." 


VII. 

THEY  vent  to  a  quiet  hotel  far  down-town,  and 
took  a  small  apartment  which  they  thought  they 
could  easily  afford  for  the  day  or  two  they  need 
spend  in  looking  up  a  furnished  flat.  They  were 
used  to  staying  at  this  hotel  when  they  came  on  for 
a  little  outing  in  New  York,  after  some  rigid  winter 
in  Boston,  at  the  time  of  the  spring  exhibitions. 
They  were  remembered  there  from  year  to  year ; 
the  coloured  call-boys,  who  never  seemed  to  get  any 
older,  smiled  upon  them,  and  the  clerk  called  March, 
by  name  even  before  he  registered.  He  asked  if 
Mrs.  March  were  with  him,  and  said  then  he  sup- 
posed they  would  want  their  usual  quarters  ;  and  in 
a  moment  they  were  domesticated  in  a  far  interior 
that  seemed  to  have  been  waiting  for  them  in  a 
clean,  quiet,  patient  disoccupation  ever  since  they 
left  it  two  years  before.  The  little  parlour,  with  its 
gilt  paper  and  ebo.iised  furniture,  was  the  lightest 
of  the  rooms,  but  it  was  not  very  light  at  noonday 
without  the  gas,  which  the  bell-boy  now  flared  up 
for  them.  The  uproar  of  the  city  came  to  it  in  a 
soothing  murmur,  and  they  took  possession  of  its 
peace  and  comfort  with  open  celebration.  After  all* 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  49 

they  agreed,  there  teas  no  place  in  the  world  so  de- 
lightful as  a  hotel  apartment  like  that ;  the  boasted 
charms  of  home  were  nothing  to  it ;  and  then  the 
magic  of  its  heing  always  there,  ready  for  any  one, 
every  one,  just  as  if  it  were  for  some  one  alone  :  it 
was  like  the  experience  of  an  Arabian  Nights  hero 
come  true  for  all  the  race. 

"  Oh,  why  can't  we  always  stay  here,  just  we  two !  " 
Mrs.  March  sighed  to  her  husband,  as  he  came  out 
of  his  room  rubbing  his  face  red  with  the  towel, 
while  she  studied  a  new  arrangement  of  her  bonnet 
and  hand-bag  on  the  mantel. 

"  And  ignore  the  past  1  I  'm  willing.  I  've  no 
doubt  that  the  children  could  get  on  perfectly  well 
without  us,  and  could  find  some  lot  in  the  scheme  of 
Providence  that  would  really  be  just  as  well  for 
them." 

"  Yes  ;  or  could  contrive  somehow  never  to  have 
existed.  I  should  insist  upon  that.  If  they  are, 
don't  you  see  that  we  couldn't  wish  them  not  to  be  ? " 

"  Oh  yes ;  I  see  your  point ;  it 's  simply  incon- 
trovertible." 

She  laughed,  and  said  :  "  Well,  at  any  rate,  if  we 
can't  find  a  flat  to  suit  us  we  can  all  crowd  into 
these  three  rooms  somehow,  for  the  winter,  and 
then  browse  about  for  meals.  By  the  week  we 
could  get  them  much  cheaper;  and  we  could  save 
on  the  eating,  as  they  do  in  Europe.  Or  on  some- 
thing else." 

"  Something  else,  probably,"  said  March.  "  But 
we  won't  take  this  apartment  till  the  ideal  furnished 
VOL.  I.— 3 


50  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

flat  winks  out  altogether.  We  shall  not  have  any 
trouble.  We  can  easily  find  some  one  who  is  going 
South  for  the  winter,  and  will  be  glad  to  give  up 
their  flat  '  to  the  right  party '  at  a  nominal  rent. 
That's  my  notion.  That's  what  the  Evanses  did 
one  winter  when  they  came  on  here  in  February. 
All  but  the  nominality  of  the  rent." 

"  Yes,  and  we  could  pay  a  very  good  rent  and 
still  save  something  on  letting  our  house.  You  can 
settle  yourselves  in  a  hundred  different  ways  in  New 
York,  that  is  one  merit  of  the  place.  But  if  every- 
thing else  fails,  we  can  come  back  to  this.  I  want 
you  to  take  the  refusal  of  it,  Basil.  And  we  '11  com- 
mence looking  this  very  evening  as  soon  as  we  've 
had  dinner.  I  cut  a  lot  of  things  out  of  the  Herald 
as  we  came  on.  See  here  ! " 

She  took  a  long  strip  of  paper  out  of  her  hand- 
bag with  minute  advertisements  pinned  transversely 
upon  it,  and  forming  the  effect  of  some  glittering 
nondescript  vertebrate. 

"Looks  something  like  the  sea-serpent,"  said 
March,  drying  his  hands  on  the  towel,  while  he 
glanced  up  and  down  the  list.  "But  we  shan't 
have  any  trouble.  I  've  no  doubt  there  are  half  a 
dozen  things  there  that  will  do.  You  haven't  gone 
up-town  ?  Because  we  must  be  near  the  Every  Other 
Week  office." 

"  No ;  but  I  wish  Mr.  Fulkerson  hadn't  called  it 
that !  It  always  makes  one  think  of  '  jam  yesterday 
and  jam  to-morrow,  but  never  jam  to-day,'  in  Through 
the  Looking-glass.  They  're  all  in  this  region." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  51 

They  were  still  at  their  table,  beside  a  low  window, 
where  some  sort  of  never-blooming  shrub  symme- 
trically balanced  itself  in  a  large  pot,  with  a  leaf  to 
the  right  and  a  leaf  to  the  left  and  a  spear  up 
the  middle,  when  Fulkerson  came  stepping  square- 
footedly  over  the  thick  dining-room  carpet.  Ho 
wagged  in  the  air  a  gay  hand  of  salutation  at  sight 
of  them,  and  of  repression  when  they  offered  to  rise 
to  meet  him ;  then,  with  an  apparent  simultaneity 
of  action  he  gave  a  hand  to  each,  pulled  up  a  chair 
from  the  next  table,  put  his  hat  and  stick  on  the 
floor  beside  it,  and  seated  himself. 

"  Well,  you  've  burnt  your  ships  behind  you,  sure 
enough,"  he  said,  beaming  his  satisfaction  upon 
them  from  eyes  and  teeth. 

"  The  ships  are  burnt,"  said  March,  "  though  I  'm 
not  sure  we  did  it  alone.  But  here  we  are,  looking 
for  shelter,  and  a  little  anxious  about  the  disposition 
of  the  natives." 

"Oh,  they're  an  awful  peaceable  lot,"  said  Ful- 
kerson. "  I  've  been  round  amongst  the  caciques  a 
little,  and  I  think  I  've  got  two  or  three  places  that 
will  just  suit  you,  Mrs.  March.  How  did  you  leave 
the  children  ? " 

"  Oh,  how  kind  of  you !  Very  well,  and  very 
proud  to  be  left  in  charge  of  the  smoking  wrecks." 

Fulkerson  naturally  paid  no  attention  to  what  she 
said,  being  but  secondarily  interested  in  the  chil- 
dren at  the  best.  "  Here  are  some  things  right  in 
this  neighbourhood,  within  gunshot  of  the  office, 
and  if  you  want  you  can  go  and  look  at  them  to- 


52  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

night ;  the  agents  gave  me  houses  where  the  people 
would  be  in." 

"  We  will  go  and  look  at  them  instantly,"  said 
Mrs.  March.  "Or,  as  soon  as  you've  had  coffee 
with  us." 

"  Never  do,"  Fulkerson  replied.  He  gathered  up 
his  hat  and  stick.  "  Just  rushed  in  to  say  Hello, 
and  got  to  run  right  away  again.  I  tell  you,  March, 
things  are  humming.  I  'm  after  those  fellows  with 
a  sharp  stick  all  the  while  to  keep  them  from 
loafing  on  my  house,  and  at  the  same  time  I  'm  just 
bubbling  over  with  ideas  about  The  Lone  Hand — 
wish  we  could  call  it  that ! — that  I  want  to  talk  up 
with  you." 

"  Well,  come  to  breakfast,"  said  Mrs.  March  cor- 
dially. 

"  No ;  the  ideas  will  keep  till  you  Ve  secured 
your  lodge  in  this  vast  wilderness.  Good-bye." 

"  You  're  as  nice  as  you  can  be,  Mr.  Fulkerson," 
she  said,  "  to  keep  us  in  mind  when  you  have  so 
much  to  occupy  you." 

"  I  wouldn't  have  anything  to  occupy  me  if  I 
hadn't  kept  you  in  mind,  Mrs.  March,"  said  Ful- 
kerson, going  off  upon  as  good  a  speech  as  he  could 
apparently  hope  to  make. 

"Why,  Basil,"  said  Mrs.  March,  when  he  was 
gone,  "  he 's  charming  !  But  now  we  mustn't  lose 
an  instant.  Let 's  see  where  the  places  are."  She 
ran  over  the  half-dozen  agents'  permits.  "Capital 
— first-rate — the  very  thing — every  one.  Well,  I 
consider  ourselves  settled  !  We  can  go  back  to  the 
children  to-morrow  if  we  like,  though  I  rather  think 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  53 

I  should  like  to  stay  over  another  day  and  get  a 
little  rested  for  the  final  pulling  up  that's  got  to 
come.  But  this  simplifies  everything  enormously, 
and  Mr.  Fulkerson  is  as  thoughtful  and  as  sweet  as 
he  can  be.  I  know  you  will  get  on  well  with  him. 
He  has  such  a  good  heart.  And  his  attitude  toward 
you,  Basil,  is  beautiful  always — so  respectful ;  or  not 
that  so  much  as  appreciative.  Yes,  appreciative— 
that 's  the  word ;  I  must  always  keep  that  in  mind." 

"  It 's  quite  important  to  do  so,"  said  March. 

"  Yes,"  she  assented  seriously,  "  and  we  must  not 
forget  just  what  kind  of  flat  we  are  going  to  look 
for.  The  sine  qua  nons  are  an  elevator  and  steam- 
heat,  not  above  the  third  floor,  to  begin  with.  Then 
we  must  each  have  a  room,  and  you  must  have  your 
study  and  I  must  have  my  parlour  ;  and  the  two  girls 
must  each  have  a  room.  With  the  kitchen  and 
dining-room,  how  many  does  that  make  1 " 

"Ten." 

"I  thought  eight.  Well,  no  matter.  You  can 
work  in  the  parlour,  and  run  into  your  bedroom  when 
anybody  comes ;  and  I  can  sit'  in  mine,  and  the  girls 
must  put  up  with  one,  if  it 's  large  and  sunny,  though 
I  Ve  always  given  them  two  at  home.  And  the 
kitchen  must  be  sunny,  so  they  can  sit  in  it.  And 
the  rooms  must  all  have  outside  light.  And  the 
rent  must  not  be  over  eight  hundred  for  the  winter. 
We  only  get  a  thousand  for  our  whole  house,  and 
we  must  save  something  out  of  that,  so  as  to  cover 
the  expenses  of  moving.  Now,  do  you  think  you 
can  remember  all  that  ? " 

"  Not  the  half  of  it,"  said  March.     "  But  you  can ; 


54  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

or  if  you  forget  a  third  of  it,  I  can  come  in  with  my 
partial  half,  and  more  than  make  it  up." 

She  had  brought  her  bonnet  and  sack  downstairs 
with  her,  and  was  transferring  them  from  the  hat- 
rack  to  her  person  while  she  talked.  The  friendly 
door-boy  let  them  into  the  street,  and  the  clear 
October  evening  air  inspirited  her  so,  that  as  she 
tucked  her  hand  under  her  husband's  arm  and  began 
to  pull  him  along,  she  said,  "  If  we  find  something 
right  away — and  we  're  just  as  likely  to  get  the  right 
flat  soon  as  late  ;  it 's  all  a  lottery — we  '11  go  to  the 
theatre  somewhere." 

She  had  a  moment's  panic  about  having  left  the 
agents'  permits  on  the  table,  and  after  remembering 
that  she  had  put  them  into  her  little  shopping-bag, 
where  she  kept  her  money  (each  note  crushed  into 
a  round  wad),  and  had  left  that  on  the  hat-rack, 
where  it  would  certainly  be  stolen,  she  found  it  on 
her  wrist.  She  did  not  think  that  very  funny,  but 
after  a  first  impulse  to  inculpate  her  husband,  she 
let  him  laugh,  while  they  stopped  under  a  lamp,  and 
she  held  the  permits  half  a  yard  away  to  read  the 
numbers  on  them. 

"  Where  are  your  glasses,  Isabel  ? " 
"  On  the  mantel  in  our  room,  of  course." 
"  Then  you  ought  to  have  brought  a  pair  of  tongs." 
"  I  wouldn't  get  off  second-hand  jokes,  Basil,"  she 
said ;  and  "  Why,  here  ! "  she  cried,  whirling  round 
to  the  door  before  which  they  had  halted,  "  this  is 
the  very  number.     Well,  I  do  believe  it 's  a  sign  ! " 
One  of  those  coloured  men  who  soften  the  trade  of 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  55 

janitor  in  many  of  the  smaller  apartment  houses  in 
New  York  by  the  sweetness  of  their  race,  let  the 
Marches  in,  or,  rather,  welcomed  them  to  the  pos- 
session of  the  premises  by  the  bow  with  which  he 
acknowledged  their  permit.  It  was  a  large,  old 
mansion  cut  up  into  five  or  six  dwellings,  but  it  had 
kept  some  traits  of  its  former  dignity,  which  pleased 
people  of  their  sympathetic  tastes.  The  dark 
mahogany  trim,  of  sufficiently  ugly  design,  gave  a 
rich  gloom  to  the  hallway,  which  was  wide,  and 
paved  with  marble ;  the  carpeted  stairs  curved  aloffc 
through  a  generous  space. 

"  There  is  no  elevator  ? "  Mrs.  March  asked  of  the 
janitor. 

He  answered,  "  No,  ma'am ;  only  two  flights  up," 
so  winningly  that  she  said — 

"  Oh  ! "  in  courteous  apology,  and  whispered  her 
husband  as  she  followed  lightly  up,  "  We  '11  take  it, 
Basil,  if  it 's  like  the  rest. " 

"  If  it 's  like  him,  you  mean." 

"  I  don't  wonder  they  wanted  to  own  them,"  she 
hurriedly  philosophised.  "  If  I  had  such  a  creature, 
nothing  but  death  should  part  us,  and  I  should  no 
more  think  of  giving  him  his  freedom  \ " 

"No;  we  couldn't  afford  it,"  returned  her  husband. 

The  apartment  the  janitor  unlocked  for  them,  and 
lit  up  from  those  chandeliers  and  brackets  of  gilt 
brass  in  the  form  of  vine  bunches,  leaves,  and  ten- 
drils in  which  the  early  gas-fitter  realised  most  of  his 
conceptions  of  beauty,  had  rather  more  of  the  ugliness 
than  the  dignity  of  the  hall.  But  the  rooms  were 
E 


56  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

large,  and  they  grouped  themselves  in  a  reminiscence 
of  the  time  when  they  were  part  of  a  dwelling,  that 
had  its  charm,  its  pathos,  its  impressiveness.  Where 
they  were  cut  up  into  smaller  spaces,  it  had  been 
done  with  the  frankness  with  which  a  proud  old 
family  of  fallen  fortunes  practises  its  economies. 
The  rough  pine  floors  showed  a  black  border  of  tack- 
heads  where  carpets  had  been  lifted  and  put  down 
for  generations ;  the  white  paint  was  yellow  with 
age  ;  the  apartment  had  light  at  the  front  and  at  the 
back,  and  two  or  three  rooms  had  glimpses  of  the 
day  through  small  windows  let  into  their  corners  ; 
another  one  seemed  lifting  an  appealing  eye  to 
heaven  through  a  glass  circle  in  its  ceiling ;  the  rest 
must  darkle  in  perpetual  twilight.  Yet  something 
pleased  in  it  all,  and  Mrs.  March  had  gone  far  to 
adapt  the  different  rooms  to  the  members  of  her 
family,  when  she  suddenly  thought  (and  for  her  to 
think  was  to  say),  "  Why,  but  there 's  no  steam- 
heat  ! " 

"No,  ma'am,"  the  janitor  admitted,  "But  dere 's 
grates  in  most  o'  de  rooms,  and  dere 's  furnace-heat 
in  de  halls." 

"That's  true,"  she  admitted,  and  having  placed 
her  family  in  the  apartments,  it  was  bard  to  get 
them  out  again.  "  Could  we  manage  1 "  she  referred 
to  her  husband. 

"  Why,  7  shouldn't  care  for  the  steam-heat  if — 
What  is  the  rent  1 "   he  broke  off  to  ask  the  janitor. 

"  Nine  hundred,  sir." 

March  concluded  to  his  wife,  "If  it  were  furnished. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  57 

"  Why,  of  course  !  What  could  I  have  been  think- 
ing of  1  We  're  looking  for  a  furnished  flat,"  she 
explained  to  the  janitor,  "  and  this  was  so  pleasant 
and  home-like,  that  I  never  thought  whether  it  was 
furnished  or  not." 

She  smiled  upon  the  janitor,  and  he  entered  into 
the  joke  and  chuckled  so  amiably  at  her  flattering 
oversight  on  the  way  downstairs  that  she  said,  as 
she  pinched  her  husband's  arm,  "  Now,  if  you  don't 
give  him  a  quarter,  I  '11  never  speak  to  you  again, 
Basil ! " 

"  I  would  have  given  half  a  dollar  willingly  to  get, 
you  beyond  his  glamour,"  said  March,  when  they 
were  safely  on  the  pavement  outside.  "  If  it  hadn't 
"been  for  my  strength  of  character,  you  'd  have  taken 
an  unfurnished  flat  without  heat  and  with  no  elevator, 
at  nine  hundred  a  year,  when  you  had  just  sworn 
me  to  steam-heat,  an  elevator,  furniture,  and  eight 
hundred." 

"  Yes  !  How  could  I  have  lost  my  head  so  com- 
pletely 1 "  she  said,  with  a  lenient  amusement  in  her 
aberration  which  she  was  not  always  able  to  feel  in 
her  husband's. 

"  The  next  time  a  coloured  janitor  opens  the  door 
to  us,  I  '11  tell  him  the  apartment  doesn't  suit  at  the 
threshold.  It 's  the  only  way  to  manage  you,  Isabel." 

"  It 's  true.  I  am  in  love  with  the  whole  race.  I 
never  saw  one  of  them  that  didn't  have  perfectly 
angelic  manners.  I  think  we  shall  all  be  black  in 
heaven — that  is,  black-souled. " 

"  That  isn't  the  usual  theory,"  said  March. 
3* 


58  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Well,  perhaps  not,"  she  assented.  "  Where  are 
we  going  now  1  Oh  yes,  to  the  Xenophon  ! " 

She  pulled  him  gaily  along  again,  and  after  they 
had  walked  a  block  down  and  half  a  block  over, 
they  stood  before  the  apartment-house  of  that  name, 
which  was  cut  on  the  gas  lamps  on  either  side  of  the 
heavily  spiked,  aesthetic-hinged  black  door.  The 
titter  of  an  electric  bell  brought  a  large,  fat  Buttons, 
with  a  stage  effect  of  being  dressed  to  look  small, 
who  said  he  would  call  the  janitor,  and  they  waited 
in  the  dimly  splendid,  copper-coloured  interior,  admir- 
ing the  whorls  and  waves  into  which  the  wall-paint 
was  combed,  till  the  janitor  came  in  his  gold-banded 
cap,  like  a  continental  porlier.  When  they  said  they 
would  like  to  see  Mrs.  Grosvenor  Green's  apartment 
he  owned  his  inability  to  cope  with  the  affair,  and 
said  he  must  send  for  the  Superintendent ;  he  was 
either  in  the  Herodotus  or  the  Thucydides,  and 
would  be  there  in  a  minute.  The  Buttons  brought 
him — a  Yankee  of  browbeating  presence  in  plain 
clothes — almost  before  they  had  time  to  exchange  a 
frightened  whisper  in  recognition  of  the  fact  that 
there  could  be  no  doubt  of  the  steam-heat  and 
elevator  in  this  case.  Half  stifled  in  the  one,  they 
mounted  in  the  other  eight  stories,  while  they  tried 
to  fceep  their  self-respect  under  the  gaze  of  the 
Superintendent,  which  they  felt  was  classing  and 
assessing  them  with  unfriendly  accuracy.  They 
could  not,  and  they  faltered  abashed  at  the  threshold 
of  Mrs.  Grosvenor  Green's  apartment,  while  the 
Superintendent  lit  the  gas  in  the  gangway  that  he 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  59 

called  a  private  hall,  and  in  the  drawing-room  and 
the  succession  of  chambers  stretching  rearward  to 
the  kitchen.  Everything  had  been  done  by  the 
architect  to  save  space,  and  everything  to  waste  it 
by  Mrs.  Grosvenor  Green.  She  had  conformed  to  a 
law  for  the  necessity  of  turning  round  in  each  room, 
and  had  folding-beds  in  the  chambers ;  but  there  her 
subordination  had  ended,  and  wherever  you  might 
have  turned  round  she  had  put  a  gimcrack  so  that 
you  would  knock  it  over  if  you  did  turn.  The  place 
was  rather  pretty  and  even  imposing  at  first  glance, 
and  it  took  several  joint  ballots  for  March  and  his 
wife  to  make  sure  that  with  the  kitchen  there  were 
only  six  rooms.  At  every  door  hung  a  portiere 
from  large  rings  on  a  brass  rod  ;  every  shelf  and 
dressing-case  and  mantel  was  littered  with  gim- 
cracks,  and  the  corners  of  the  tiny  rooms  were 
curtained  off,  and  behind  these  portieres  swarmed 
more  gimcracks.  The  front  of  the  upright  piano 
had  what  March  called  a  short-skirted  portiere  on 
it,  and  the  top  was  covered  with  vases,  with  dragon 
candlesticks,  and  with  Jap  fans,  which  also  expanded 
themselves  bat-wise  on  the  walls  between  the  etch- 
ings and  the  water-colours.  The  floors  were  covered 
with  filling,  and  then  rugs,  and  then  skins ;  the 
easy-chairs  all  had  tidies,  Armenian  and  Turkish 
and  Persian ;  the  lounges  and  sofas  had  embroidered 
cushions  hidden  under  tidies.  The  radiator  was 
concealed  by  a  Jap  screen,  and  over  the  top  of  this 
some  Arab  scarfs  were  flung.  There  was  a  super- 
abundance of  clocks.  China  pugs  guarded  the 


60  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

hearth  ;  a  brass  sunflower  smiled  from  the  top  of 
either  andiron,  and  a  brass  peacock  spread  its  tail 
before  them  inside  a  high  filigree  fender ;  on  one 
side  was  a  coal-hod  in  repoussd  brass,  and  on  the 
other  a  wrought-iron  wood-basket.  Some  red  Japan- 
ese bird-kites  were  stuck  about  in  the  necks  of 
spelter  vases,  a  crimson  Jap  umbrella  hung  opened 
beneath  the  chandelier,  and  each  globe  had  a  shade 
of  yellow  silk. 

March,  when  he  had  recovered  his  self-command 
a  little  in  the  presence  of  the  agglomeration,  com- 
forted himself  by  calling  the  bric-a-brac  Jamescracks, 
as  if  this  was  their  full  name. 

The  disrespect  he  was  able  to  show  the  whole 
apartment  by  means  of  this  joke  strengthened  him 
to  say  boldly  to  the  Superintendent  that  it  was 
altogether  too  small ;  then  he  asked  carelessly  what 
the  rent  was. 

"  Two  hundred  and  fifty." 

The  Marches  gave  a  start,  and  looked  at  each  other. 

"  Don't  you  think  we  could  make  it  do  1  "  she 
asked  him,  and  he  could  see  that  she  had  mentally 
saved  five  hundred  dollars  as  the  difference  between 
the  rent  of  their  house  and  that  of  this  flat.  "  It  has 
some  very  pretty  features,  and  we  could  manage  to 
squeeze  in,  couldn't  we  ? " 

"  You  won't  find  another  furnished  flat  like  it  for 
no  two  fifty  a  month  in  the  whole  city,"  the  Superin- 
tendent put  in. 

They  exchanged  glances  again,  and  March  said 
carelessly,  "It's  too  small." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  61 

"  There 's  a  vacant  flat  in  the  Herodotus  for 
eighteen  hundred  a  year,  and  one  in  the  Thucydides 
for  fifteen,"  the  Superintendent  suggested,  clicking 
his  keys  together  as  they  sank  down  in  the  elevator ; 
"  seven  rooms  and  a  bath." 

"Thank  you,"  said  March,  "we're  looking  for  a 
•furnished  flat." 

They  felt  that  the  Superintendent  parted  from 
them  with  repressed  sarcasm. 

"  O  Basil,  do  you  think  we  really  made  him  think 
it  was  the  smallness  and  not  the  dearness  ? " 

"  No,  but  we  saved  our  self-respect  in  the  attempt ; 
and  that's  a  great  deal." 

"  Of  course,  I  wouldn't  have  taken  it,  anyway,  with 
only  six  rooms,  and  so  high  up.  But  what  prices ! 
Now,  we  must  be  very  circumspect  about  the  next 
place." 

It  was  a  janitress,  large,  fat,  with  her  arms  wound 
up  in  her  apron,  who  received  them  there.  Mrs. 
March  gave  her  a  succinct  but  perfect  statement  of 
their  needs.  She  failed  to  grasp  the  nature  of  them, 
or  feigned  to  do  so.  She  shook  her  head,  and  said 
that  her  son  would  show  them  the  flat.  There  was 
a  radiator  visible  in  the  narrow  hall,  and  Isabel 
tacitly  compromised  on  steam-heat  without  an  ele- 
vator, as  the  flat  was  only  one  flight  up.  When  the 
son  appeared  from  below  with  a  small  kerosene 
hand-lamp,  it  appeared  that  the  flat  was  unfur- 
nished, but  there  was  no  stopping  him  till  he  had 
shown  it  in  all  its  impossibility.  When  they  got 
safely  away  from  it  and  into  the  street  March  said, 


62  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Well,  have  you  had  enough  for  to-night,  Isabel  1 
Shall  we  go  to  the  theatre  now  ? " 

"Not  on  any  account.  I  want  to  see  the  whole 
list  of  flats  that  Mr.  Fulkerson  thought  would  be 
the  very  thing  for  us."  She  laughed,  but  with  a 
certain  bitterness. 

"  You  '11  be  calling  him  my  Mr.  Fulkerson  next, 
Isabel." 

"  Oh  no  ! " 

The  fourth  address  was  a  furnished  flat  without 
a  kitchen,  in  a  house  with  a  general  restaurant. 
The  fifth  was  a  furnished  house.  At  the  sixth  a 
pathetic  widow  and  her  pretty  daughter  wanted 
to  take  a  family  to  board,  and  would  give  them  a 
private  table  at  a  rate  which  the  Marches  would 
have  thought  low  in  Boston. 

Mrs.  March  came  away  tingling  with  compassion 
for  their  evident  anxisty,  and  this  pity  naturally 
soured  into  a  sense  of  injury.  "  Well,  I  must  say  I 
have  completely  lost  confidence  in  Mr.  Fulkerson's 
judgment.  Anything  more  utterly  different  from 
what  I  told  him  we  wanted  I  couldn't  imagine.  If 
he  doesn't  manage  any  better  about  his  business 
than  he  has  done  about  this,  it  will  be  a  perfect 
failure." 

"  Well,  well,  let 's  hope  he  '11  be  more  circumspect 
about  that,"  her  husband  returned,  with  ironical 
propitiation.  "  But  I  don't  think  it 's  Fulkerson's 
fault  altogether.  Perhaps  it's  the  house-agents'. 
They're  a  very  illusory  generation.  There  seems 
to  be  something  in  the  human  habitation  that  cor- 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  63 

rupts  the  natures  of  those  who  deal  in  it,  to  buy 
or  sell  it,  to  hire  or  let  it.  You  go  to  an  agent 
and  tell  him  what  kind  of  a  house  you  want.  He 
has  no  such  house,  and  he  sends  you  to  look  at 
something  altogether  different,  upon  the  well-ascer- 
tained principle  that  if  you  can't  get  what  you  want, 
you  will  take  what  you  can  get.  You  don't  sup- 
pose the  '  party '  that  took  our  house  in  Boston  was 
looking  for  any  such  house  ?  He  was  looking  for  a 
totally  different  kind  of  house  in  another  part  of  the 
town." 

"  I  don't  believe  that ! "  his  wife  broke  in. 

"  Well,  no  matter.  But  see  what  a  scandalous 
rent  you  asked  for  it." 

"  We  didn't  get  much  more  than  half ;  and,  be- 
sides, the  agent  told  me  to  ask  fourteen  hundred." 

"  Oh,  I  'm  not  blaming  you,  Isabel.  I  'm  only 
analysing  the  house-agent,  and  exonerating  Fulker- 
son." 

"  Well,  I  don't  believe  he  told  them  just  what  we 
wanted ;  and  at  any  rate,  I  'm  done  with  agents. 
To-morrow,  I  'm  going  entirely  by  advertisements." 


VIII. 

MRS.  MARCH  took  the  vertebrate  with  her  to  the 
Vienna  Coffee-house,  where  they  went  to  breakfast 
next  morning.  She  made  March  buy  her  the 
Herald  and  the  fVorld,  and  she  added  to  its  spiny 
convolutions  from  them.  She  read  the  new  adver- 
tisements aloud  with  ardour  and  with  faith  to  believe 
that  the  apartments  described  in  them  were  every 
one  truthfully  represented,  and  that  any  one  of  them 
was  richly  responsive  to  their  needs.  "Elegant, 
light,  large,  single,  and  outside  flats "  were  offered 
with  "  all  improvements — bath,  ice-box,  etc." — for 
$25  and  $30  a  month.  The  cheapness  was  amazing. 
The  Wagram,  the  Esmeralda,  the  Jacinth,  advertised 
them  for  $40  and  860,  "with  steam-heat  and  eleva- 
tor," rent  free  till  November.  Others,  attractive 
from  their  air  of  conscientious  scruple,  announced 
" first-class  flats;  good  order ;  reasonable  rents."  The 
Helena  asked  the  reader  if  she  had  seen  the  "  cabinet 
finish,  hard-wood  floors,  and  frescoed  ceilings"  of  its 
$50  flats ;  the  Asteroid  affirmed  that  such  apart- 
ments, with  "  six  light  rooms  and  bath,  porcelain 
wash-tubs,  electric  bells,  and  hall-boy,"  as  it  offered 
for  $75  were  unapproached  by  competition.  There 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  65 

was  a  sameness  in  the  jargon  which  tended  to  con- 
fusion. Mrs.  March  got  several  flats  on  her  list 
which  promised  neither  steam-heat  nor  elevators ; 
she  forgot  herself  so  far  as  to  include  two  or  three 
as  remote  from  the  down-town  region  of  her  choice 
as  Harlem.  But  after  she  had  rejected  these  the 
nondescript  vertebrate  was  still  voluminous  enough 
to  sustain  her  buoyant  hopes. 

The  waiter,  who  remembered  them  from  year  to 
year,  had  put  them  at  a  window  giving  a  pretty  good 
section  of  Broadway,  and  before  they  set  out  on 
their  search  they  had  a  moment  of  reminiscence. 
They  recalled  the  Broadway  of  five,  of  ten,  of  twenty 
years  ago,  swelling  and  roaring  with  a  tide  of  gaily 
painted  omnibuses  and  of  picturesque  traffic  that  the 
horse-cars  have  now  banished  from  it.  The  grind  of 
their  wheels  and  the  clash  of  their  harsh  bells  im- 
perfectly fill  the  silence  that  the  omnibuses  have  left, 
and  the  eye  misses  the  tumultuous  perspective  of 
former  times. 

They  went  out  and  stood  for  a  moment  before 
Grace  Church,  and  looked  down  the  stately  thorough- 
fare, and  found  it  no  longer  impressive,  no  longer 
characteristic.  It  is  still  Broadway  in  name,  but  now 
it  is  like  any  other  street.  You  do  not  now  take 
your  life  in  your  hand  when  you  attempt  to  cross  it ; 
the  Broadway  policeman  who  supported  the  elbow 
of  timorous  beauty  in  the  hollow  of  his  cotton-gloved 
palm  and  guided  its  little  fearful  boots  over  the 
crossing,  while  he  arrested  the  billowy  omnibuses  on 
either  side  with  an  imperious  glance,  is  gone,  and  all 


66  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

that  certain  processional,  barbaric  gaiety  of  the  place 
is  gone. 

"  Palmyra,  Baalbec,  Timour  of  the  Desert,"  said 
March,  voicing  their  common  feeling  of  the  change. 

They  turned  and  went  into  the  beautiful  church, 
and  found  themselves  in  time  for  the  matin  service. 
Rapt  far  from  New  York,  if  not  from  earth,  in  the 
dim  richness  of  the  painted  light,  the  hallowed  music 
took  them  with  solemn  ecstasy ;  the  aerial,  aspiring 
Gothic  forms  seemed  to  lift  them  heavenward.  They 
came  out,  reluctant,  into  the  dazzle  and  bustle  of  the 
street,  with  a  feeling  that  they  were  too  good  for  it, 
which  they  confessed  to  each  other  with  whimsical 
consciousness. 

"  But  no  matter  how  consecrated  we  feel  now,"  he 
said,  "we  mustn't  forget  that  we  went  into  the 
church  for  precisely  the  same  reason  that  we  went 
to  the  Vienna  Cafe  for  breakfast — to  gratify  an 
aesthetic  sense,  to  renew  the  faded  pleasure  of  travel 
for  a  moment,  to  get  back  into  the  Europe  of  our 
youth.  It  was  a  purely  Pagan  impulse,  Isabel,  and 
we  'd  better  own  it." 

"  I  don't  know,"  she  returned.  "  I  think  we  re- 
duce ourselves  to  the  bare  bones  too  much.  I  wish 
we  didn't  always  recognise  the  facts  as  we  do.  Some- 
times I  should  like  to  blink  them.  I  should  like  to 
think  I  was  devouter  than  I  am,  and  younger  and 
prettier." 

'  Better  not ;  you  couldn't  keep  it  up.  Honesty 
is  the  best  policy  even  in  such  things." 

"  Xo ;  I  don't  like  it,  Basil.     I  should  rather  wait 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  67 

till  the  last  day  for  some  of  my  motives  to  come  to 
the  top.  I  know  they  're  always  mixed,  but  do  let 
me  give  them  the  benefit  of  a  doubt  sometimes." 

"  Well,  well,  have  it  your  own  way,  my  dear. 
But  I  prefer  not  to  lay  up  so  many  disagreeable  sur- 
prises for  myself  at  that  time." 

She  would  not  consent.  "  I  know  I  am  a  good  deal 
younger  than  I  was.  I  feel  quite  in  the  mood  of 
that  morning  when  we  walked  down  Broadway  on 
our  wedding  journey.  Don't  you  ? " 

"  Oh  yes.  But  I  know  I  'm  not  younger ;  I  'm 
only  prettier." 

She  laughed  for  pleasure  in  his  joke,  and  also  for 
unconscious  joy  in  the  gay  New  York  weather,  in 
which  there  was  no  arribre  pensde  of  the  east  wind. 
They  had  crossed  Broadway,  and  were  walking  over  - 
to  Washington  Square,  in  the  region  of  which  they 
now  hoped  to  place  themselves.  The  primo  tenore 
statue  of  Garibaldi  had  already  taken  possession  of 
the  place  in  the  name  of  Latin  progress,  and  they 
met  Italian  faces,  French  faces,  Spanish  faces,  as  they 
strolled  over  the  asphalte  walks,  under  the  thinning 
shadows  of  the  autumn-stricken  sycamores.  They 
met  the  familiar  picturesque  raggedness  of  southern 
Europe  with  the  old  kindly  illusion  that  somehow 
it  existed  for  their  appreciation,  and  that  it  found 
adequate  compensation  for  poverty  in  this.  March 
thought  he  sufficiently  expressed  his  tacit  sympathy 
in  sitting  down  on  one  of  the  iron  benches  with  his 
wife,  and  letting  a  little  Neapolitan  put  a  superfluous 
shine  on  his  boots,  while  their  desultory  comment 


68  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

wandered  with  equal  esteem  to  the  old-fashioned 
American  respectability  which  keeps  the  north  side 
of  the  square  in  vast  mansions  of  red  brick,  and  the 
international  shabbiness  which  has  invaded  the 
southern  border,  and  broken  it  up  into  lodging- 
houses,  shops,  beer  gardens,  and  studios. 

They  noticed  the  sign  of  an  apartment  to  let  on 
the  north  side,  and  as  soon  as  the  little  boot-black 
could  be  bought  off  they  went  over  to  look  at  it. 
The  janitor  met  them  at  the  door  and  examined 
them.  Then  he  said,  as  if  still  in  doubt,  "It  has 
ten  rooms,  and  the  rent  is  twenty-eight  hundred 
dollars." 

"It  wouldn't  do,  then,"  March  replied,  and  left 
him  to  divide  the  responsibility  between  the  paucity 
of  the  rooms  and  the  enormity  of  the  rent  as  he  best 
might.  But  their  self-love  had  received  a  wound, 
and  they  questioned  each  other  what  it  was  in  their 
appearance  made  him  doubt  their  ability  to  pay  so 
much. 

"Of  course  we  don't  look  like  New-Yorkers," 
sighed  Mrs.  March,  "  and  we  've  walked  through 
the  Square.  That  might  be  as  if  we  had  walked 
along  the  Park  Street  mall  in  the  Common  before 
we  came  out  on  Beacon.  Do  you  suppose  he  could 
have  seen  you  getting,  your  boots  blacked  in  that 
way  ? " 

"  It 's  useless  to  ask,"  said  March.  "  But  I  never 
can  recover  from  this  blow." 

"  Oh  pshaw  !  You  know  you  hate  such  things 
as  badly  as  I  do.  It  was  very  impertinent  of  him." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  69 

"  Let  us  go  back,  and  ^eraser  I'infdme  by  paying 
him  a  year's  rent  in  advance  and  taking  immediate 
possession.  Nothing  else  can  soothe  my  wounded 
feelings.  You  were  not  having  your  boots  blacked  : 
why  shouldn't  he  have  supposed  you  were  a  New- 
Yorker,  and  I  a  country  cousin  ?  " 

"They  always  know.  Don't  you  remember  Mrs. 
Williams's  going  to  a  Fifth  Avenue  milliner  in  a 
Worth  dress,  and  the  woman's  asking  her  instantly 
what  hotel  she  should  send  her  hat  to  1 " 

"  Yes  ;  these  things  drive  one  to  despair.  I  don't 
wonder  the  bodies  of  so  many  genteel  strangers  are 
found  in  the  waters  around  New  York.  Shall  we 
try  the  south  side,  my  dear  1  or  had  we  better  go 
back  to  our  rooms  and  rest  a  while  1 " 

Mrs.  March  had  out  the  vertebrate,  and  was  con- 
sulting one  of  its  glittering  ribs,  and  glancing  up 
from  it  at  a  house  before  which  they  stood.  "  Yes, 
it 's  the  number ;  but  do  they  call  this  being  ready 
October  1st1?"  The  little  area  in  front  of  the  base- 
ment was  heaped  with  a  mixture  of  mortar,  bricks, 
laths,  and  shavings  from  the  interior ;  the  brown- 
stone  steps  to  the  front  door  were  similarly 
bestrewn  ;  the  doorway  showed  the  half-open  rough 
pine  carpenter's  hatch  of  an  unfinished  house ;  the 
sashless  windows  of  every  story  showed  the  activity 
of  workmen  within  ;  the  clatter  of  hammers  and 
the  hiss  of  saws  came  out  to  them  from  every  open- 
ing. 

"  They  may  call  it  October  1st,"  said  March,  "be- 
cause it 's  too  late  to  contradict  them.  But  they  'd 
F 


70  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

better  not  call  it  December  1st  in  my  presence ;  I  '11 
let  them  say  January  1st,  at  a  pinch." 

"  AVe  will  go  in  and  look  at  it  anyway,"  said  his 
wife ;  and  he  admired  how,  when  she  was  once 
within,  she  began  provisionally  to  settle  the  family 
in  each  of  the  several  floors  with  the  female  instinct 
for  domiciliation  which  never  failed  her.  She  had 
the  help  of  the  landlord,  who  was  present  to  urge 
forward  the  workmen  apparently ;  he  lent  a  hopeful 
fancy  to  the  solution  of  all  her  questions.  To  get 
her  from  under  his  influence  March  had  to  represent 
that  the  place  was  damp  from  undried  plastering, 
and  that  if  she  stayed  she  would  probably  be  down 
with  that  New  York  pneumonia  which  visiting  Bos- 
tonians  are  always  dying  of.  Once  safely  on  the 
pavement  outside,  she  realised  that  the  apartment 
was  not  only  unfinished,  but  unfurnished,  and  had 
neither  steam-heat  nor  elevator.  "  But  I  thought  we 
had  better  look  at  everything,"  she  explained. 

"  Yes,  but  not  take  everything.  If  I  hadn't  pulled 
you  away  from  there  by  main  force  you  'd  have  not 
only  died  of  New  York  pneumonia  on  the  spot,  but 
you  'd  have  had  us  all  settled  there  before  we  knew 
what  we  were  about." 

"  Well,  that 's  what  I  can't  help,  Basil.  It 's  the 
only  way  I  can  realise  whether  it  will  do  for  us.  I 
have  to  dramatise  the  whole  thing." 

She  got  a  deal  of  pleasure  as  well  as  excitement 
out  of  this,  and  he  had  to  own  that  the  process  of 
setting  up  house-keeping  in  so  many  different  places 
was  not  only  entertaining,  but  tended,  through  as- 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  71 

sociation  with  their  first  beginnings  in  house-keep- 
ing, to  restore  the  image  of  their  early  married 
days,  and  to  make  them  young  again. 

It  went  on  all  day,  and  continued  far  into  the 
night,  until  it  was  too  late  to  go  to  the  theatre,  too 
late  to  do  anything  but  tumble  into  bed  and  simul- 
taneously fall  on  sleep.  They  groaned  over  their 
reiterated  disappointments,  but  they  could  not  deny 
that  the  interest  was  unfailing,  and  that  they  got  a 
great  deal  of  fun  out  of  it  all.  Nothing  could  abate 
Mrs.  March's  faith  in  her  advertisements.  One  of 
them  sent  her  to  a  flat  of  ten  rooms  which  promised 
to  be  the  solution  of  all  their  difficulties ;  it  proved 
to  be  over  a  livery-stable,  a  liquor  store,  and  a 
milliner's  shop,  none  of  the  first  fashion.  Another 
led  them  far  into  old  Greenwich  Village  to  an 
apartment-house,  which  she  refused  to  enter  be- 
hind a  small  girl  with  a  loaf  of  bread  under  one 
arm  and  a  quart  can  of  milk  under  the  other. 

In  their  search  they  were  obliged,  as  March  com- 
plained, to  the  acquisition  of  useless  information  in 
a  degree  unequalled  in  their  experience.  They  came 
to  excel  in  the  sad  knowledge  of  the  line  at  which 
respectability  distinguishes  itself  from  shabbiness. 
Flattering  advertisements  took  them  to  numbers 
of  huge  apartment-houses  chiefly  distinguishable 
from  tenement-houses  by  the  absence  of  fire-escapes 
on  their  facades,  till  Mrs.  March  refused  to  stop  at 
any  door  where  there  were  more  than  six  bell-rat- 
chets and  speaking-tubes  on  either  hand.  Before 
the  middle  of  the  afternoon  she  decided  against 


72  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

ratchets  altogether,  and  confined  herself  to  knobs, 
neatly  set  in  the  door-trim.  Her  husband  was  still 
sunk  in  the  superstition  that  you  can  live  anywhere 
you  like  in  New  York,  and  he  would  have  paused  at 
some  places  where  her  quicker  eye  caught  the  fatal 
sign  of  "  Modes  "  in  the  ground-floor  windows.  She 
found  that  there  was  an  east  and  west  line  beyond 
which  they  could  not  go  if  they  wished  to  keep  their 
self-respect,  and  that  within  the  region  to  which 
they  had  restricted  themselves  there  was  a  choice  of 
streets.  At  first  all  the  New  York  streets  looked  to 
them  ill-paved,  dirty,  and  repulsive ;  the  general 
infamy  imparted  itself  in  their  casual  impression  to 
streets  in  no  wise  guilty.  But  they  began  to  notice 
that  some  streets  were  quiet  and  clean,  and,  though 
never  so  quiet  and  clean  as  Boston  streets,  that  they 
wore  an  air  of  encouraging  reform,  and  suggested  a 
future  of  greater  and  greater  domesticity.  Whole 
blocks  of  these  down-town  cross  streets  seemed  to 
have  been  redeemed  from  decay,  and  even  in  the 
midst  of  squalor  a  dwelling  here  and  there  had  been 
seized,  painted  a  dull-red  as  to  its  brick-work,  and 
a  glossy  black  as  to  its  wood-work,  and  with  a  bright 
brass  bell-pull  and  door  knob  and  a  large  brass  plate 
for  its  key-hole  escutcheon,  had  been  endowed  with 
an  effect  of  purity  and  pride  which  removed  its 
shabby  neighbourhood  far  from  it. 

Some  of  these  houses  were  quite  small,  and 
imaginably  within  their  means ;  but,  as  March  said, 
somebody  seemed  always  to  be  living  there  himself, 
and  the  fact  that  none  of  them  were  to  rent  kept 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  73 

Mrs.  March  true  to  her  ideal  of  a  flat.  Nothing 
prevented  its  realisation  so  much  as  its  difference 
from  the  New  York  ideal  of  a  flat,  which  was  in- 
flexibly seven  rooms  and  a  bath.  One  or  two  rooms 
might  be  at  the  front,  the  rest  crooked  and  cornered 
backward  through  increasing  and  then  decreasing 
darkness  till  they  reached  a  light  bedroom  or  kitchen 
at  the  rear.  It  might  be  the  one  or  the  other,  but 
it  was  always  the  seventh  room  with  the  bath ;  or 
if,  as  sometimes  happened,  it  was  the  eighth,  it  was 
so  after  having  counted  the  bath  as  one.  In  this 
case  the  janitor  said  you  always  counted  the  bath  as 
one.  If  the  flats  were  advertised  as  having  "all 
light  rooms,"  he  explained  that  any  room  with  a 
window  giving  into  the  open  air  of  a  court  or  shaft 
was  counted  a  light  room. 

The  Marches  tried  to  make  out  why  it  was  that 
these  flats  were  so  much  more  repulsive  than  the 
apartments  which  every  one  lived  in  abroad ;  but 
they  could  only  do  so  upon  the  supposition  that 
in  their  European  days  they  were  too  young,  too 
happy,  too  full  of  the  future,  to  notice  whether 
rooms  were  inside  or  outside,  light  or  dark,  big  or 
little,  high  or  low.  "  Now  we  're  imprisoned  in 
the  present,"  he  said,  "and  we  have  to  make  the 
worst  of  it." 

In  their  despair  he  had  an  inspiration,  which  she 
declared  worthy  of  him  :  it  was  to  take  two  small 
flats,  of  four  or  five  rooms  and  a  bath,  and  live  in 
both.  They  tried  this  in  a  great  many  places ;  but 
they  never  could  get  two  flats  of  the  kind  on  the 
VOL.  I.— 4 


74  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

same  floor  where  there  was  steam-heat  and  an 
elevator.  At  one  place  they  almost  did  it.  They 
had  resigned  themselves  to  the  humility  of  the 
neighbourhood,  to  the  prevalence  of  modistes  and 
livery-stablemen  (they  seem  to  consort  much  in  New 
York),  to  the  garbage  in  the  gutters  and  the  litter 
of  paper  in  the  streets,  to  the  faltering  slats  in  the 
surrounding  window-shutters  and  the  crumbled 
brown-stone  steps  and  sills,  when  it  turned  out  that 
one  of  the  apartments  had  been  taken  between  two 
visits  they  made.  Then  the  only  combination  left 
open  to  them  was  of  a  ground-floor  flat  to  the  right 
and  a  third-floor  flat  to  the  left. 

Still  they  kept  this  inspiration  in  reserve  for  use 
at  the  first  opportunity.  In  the  meantime  there 
were  several  flats  which  they  thought  they  could 
almost  make  do  :  notably  one  where  they  could  get 
an  extra  servant's  room  in  the  basement  four  flights 
down,  and  another  where  they  could  get  it  in  the 
roof  five  flights  up.  At  the  first  the  janitor  was 
respectful  and  enthusiastic  ;  at  the  second  he  had  an 
effect  of  ironical  pessimism.  When  they  trembled 
on  the  verge  of  taking  his  apartment,  he  pointed  out 
a  spot  in  the  kalsomining  of  the  parlour  ceiling,  and 
gratuitously  said,  Now  such  a  thing  as  that  he  should 
not  agree  to  put  in  shape  unless  they  took  the  apart- 
ment for  a  term  of  years.  The  apartment  was 
unfurnished,  and  they  recurred  to  the  fact  that  they 
wanted  a  furnished  apartment,  and  made  their  escape. 
This  saved  them  in  several  other  extremities ;  but 
short  of  extremity  they  could  not  keep  their  different 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  75 

requirements  in  mind,  and  were  always  about  to 
decide  without  regard  to  some  one  of  them. 

They  went  to  several  places  twice  without  intend- 
ing :  once  to  that  old-fashioned  house  with  the 
pleasant  coloured  janitor,  and  wandered  all  over  the 
apartment  again  with  a  haunting  sense  of  familiarity, 
and  then  recognised  the  janitor  and  laughed ;  and  to 
that  house  with  the  pathetic  widow  and  the  pretty 
daughter  who  wished  to  take  them  to  board.  They 
stayed  to  excuse  their  blunder,  and  easily  came  by  the 
fact  that  the  mother  had  taken  the  house  that  the 
girl  might  have  a  home  while  she  was  in  New  York 
studying  art,  and  they  hoped  to  pay  their  way  by 
taking  boarders.  Her  daughter  was  at  her  class 
now,  the  mother  concluded ;  and  they  encouraged 
her  to  believe  that  it  could  only  be  a  few  days  till 
the  rest  of  her  scheme  was  realised. 

"  I  dare  say  we  could  be  perfectly  comfortable 
there,"  March  suggested  when  they  had  got  away. 
"  Now  if  we  were  truly  humane  we  would  modify 
our  desires  to  meet  their  needs  and  end  this  sicken- 
ing search,  wouldn't  we  ? " 

"  Yes,  but  we  're  not  truly  humane,"  his  wife 
answered,  "or  at  least  not  in  that  sense.  You  know 
you  hate  boarding ;  and  if  we  went  there  I  should 
have  them  on  my  sympathies  the  whole  time." 

"  I  see.  And  then  you  would  take  it  out  of 
me." 

"  Then  I  should  take  it  out  of  you.  And  if  you 
are  going  to  be  so  weak,  Basil,  and  let  every  little 
thing  work  upon  you  in  that  way,  you  'd  better  not 


76  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

come  to  New  York.  You'll  see  enough  misery 
here." 

"Well,  don't  take  that  superior  tone  with  me,  as 
if  I  were  a  child  that  had  its  mind  set  on  an  unde- 
sirable toy,  Isabel." 

"  Ah,  don't  you  suppose  it 's  because  you  are  such 
a  child  in  some  respects  that  I  like  you,  dear  ?  "  she 
demanded,  without  relenting. 

"  But  I  don't  find  so  much  misery  in  New  York. 
I  don't  suppose  there 's  any  more  suffering  here  to 
the  population  than  there  is  in  the  country.  And 
they  're  so  gay  about  it  all.  I  think  the  outward 
aspect  of  the  place  and  the  hilarity  of  the  sky  and 
air  must  get  into  the  people's  blood.  The  weather 
is  simply  unapproachable  ;  and  I  don't  care  if  it  is 
the  ugliest  place  in  the  world,  as  you  say.  I  sup- 
pose it  is.  It  shrieks  and  yells  with  ugliness  here 
and  there,  but  it  never  loses  its  spirits.  That 
widow  is  from  the  country.  When  she 's  been  a 
year  in  New  York  she  '11  be  as  gay — as  gay  as  an  L 
road."  He  celebrated  a  satisfaction  they  both  had 
in  the  L  roads.  "  They  kill  the  streets  and  avenues, 
but  at  least  they  partially  hide  them,  and  that  is 
some  comfort ;  and  they  do  triumph  over  their 
prostrate  forms  with  a  savage  exultation  that  is 
intoxicating.  Those  bends  in  the  L  that  you  get  in 
the  corner  of  Washington  Square,  or  just  below  the 
Cooper  Institute — they  're  the  gayest  things  in  the 
world.  Perfectly  atrocious,  of  course,  but  incom- 
parably picturesque  !  And  the  whole  city  is  so," 
said  March,  "or  else  the  L  would  never  have  got 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  77 

built  here.  New  York  may  be  splendidly  gay  or 
squalidly  gay;  but,  prince  or  pauper,  it's  gay 
always." 

"Yes,  gay  is  the  word,"  she  admitted,  with  a 
sigh.  "  But  frantic.  I  can't  get  used  to  it.  They  for- 
get death,  Basil ;  they  forget  death  in  New  York." 

"  Well,  I  don't  know  that  I  Ve  ever  found  much 
advantage  in  remembering  it." 

"Don't  say  such  a  thing,  dearest." 

He  could  see  that  she  had  got  to  the  end  of  her 
nervous  strength  for  the  present,  and  he  proposed 
that  they  should  take  the  Elevated  road  as  far  as  it 
would  carry  them  into  the  country,  and  shake  off 
their  nightmare  of  flat-hunting  for  an  hour  or  two ; 
but  her  conscience  would  not  let  her.  She  con- 
victed him  of  levity  equal  to  that  of  the  New- 
Yorkers  in  proposing  such  a  thing;  and  they 
dragged  through  the  day.  She  was  too  tired  to 
care  for  dinner,  and  in  the  night  she  had  a  dream 
from  which  she  woke  herself  with  a  cry  that  roused 
him  too.  It  was  something  about  the  children  at 
first,  whom  they  had  talked  of  wistfully  before 
falling  asleep,  and  then  it  was  of  a  hideous  thing 
with  two  square  eyes  and  a  series  of  sections  grow- 
ing darker  and  then  lighter,  till  the  tail  of  the 
monstrous  articulate  was  quite  luminous  again. 
She  shuddered  at  the  vague  description  she  was 
able  to  give ;  but  he  asked,  "  Did  it  offer  to  bite 
you  1 " 

"No.  That  was  the  most  frightful  thing  about 
it;  it  had  no  mouth." 


78  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

March  laughed.  "  Why,  my  dear,  it  was  nothing 
but  a  harmless  New  York  flat — seven  rooms  and 
a  bath." 

"I  really  believe  it  was,"  she  consented,  recog- 
nising an  architectural  resemblance,  and  she  fell 
asleep  again,  and  woke  renewed  for  the  work  before 
them. 


IX. 


THEIR  house-hunting  no  longer  had  novelty,  but 
it  still  had  interest ;  and  they  varied  their-  day  by 
taking  a  coupe",  by  renouncing  advertisements,  and 
by  reverting  to  agents.  Some  of  these  induced  them 
to  consider  the  idea  of  furnished  houses ;  and  Mrs. 
March  learned  tolerance  for  Fulkerson  by  accepting 
permits  to  visit  flats  and  houses  which  had  none  of 
the  qualifications  she  desired  in  either,  and  were  as 
far  beyond  her  means  as  they  were  out  of  the  region 
to  which  she  had  geographically  restricted  herself. 
They  looked  at  three-thousand  and  four-thousand 
dollar  apartments,  and  rejected  them  for  one  reason 
or  another  which  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  rent ; 
the  higher  the  rent  was,  the  more  critical  they  were 
of  the  slippery  inlaid  floors  and  the  arrangement  of 
the  richly  decorated  rooms.  They  never  knew 
whether  they  had  deceived  the  janitor  or  not ;  as 
they  came  in  a  coupe",  they  hoped  they  had. 

They  drove  accidentally  through  one  street  that 
seemed  gayer  in  the  perspective  than  an  L  road. 
The  fire-escapes,  with  their  light  iron  balconies  and 
ladders  of  iron,  decorated  the  lofty  house  fronts ; 
the  roadway  and  sidewalks  and  door-steps  swarmed 


80  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

with  children;  women's  neads  seemed  to  show  at- 
every  window.  In  the  basements,  over  which  nights 
of  high  stone  steps  led  to  the  tenements,  were  green- 
grocers' shops  abounding  in  cabbages,  and  provision 
stores  running  chiefly  to  bacon  and  sausages,  and 
cobblers'  and  tinners'  shops,  and  the  like,  in  pro- 
portion to  the  small  needs  of  a  poor  neighbourhood. 
Ash  barrels  lined  the  sidewalks,  and  garbage  heaps 
filled  the  gutters;  teams  of  all  trades  stood  idly 
about ;  a  peddler  of  cheap  fruit  urged  his  cart  through 
the  street,  and  mixed  his  cry  with  the  joyous  screams 
and  shouts  of  the  children  and  the  scolding  and 
gossiping  voices  of  the  women  ;  the  burly  blue  bulk 
of  a  policeman  defined  itself  at  the  corner ;  a 
drunkard  zigzagged  down  the  sidewalk  toward  him. 
It  was  not  the  abode  of  the  extremest  poverty,  but 
of  a  poverty  as  hopeless  as  any  in  the  world,  trans- 
mitting itself  from  generation  to  generation,  and 
establishing  conditions  of  permanency  to  which 
human  life  adjusts  itself  as  it  does  to  those  of  some 
incurable  disease,  like  leprosy. 

The  time  had  been  when  the  Marches  would  have 
taken  a  purely  aesthetic  view  of  the  facts  as  they 
glimpsed  them  in  this  street  of  tenement-houses ; 
when  they  would  have  contented  themselves  with 
saying  that  it  was  as  picturesque  as  a  street  in 
Naples  or  Florence,  and  with  wondering  why  nobody 
came  to  paint  it ;  they  would  have  thought  they 
were  sufficiently  serious  about  it  in  blaming  the 
artists  for  their  failure  to  appreciate  it,  and  going- 
abroad  for  the  picturesque  when  they  had  it  here 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  81 

under  their  noses.  It  was  to  the  nose  that  the  street 
made  one  of  its  strongest  appeals,  and  Mrs.  March 
pulled  up  her  window  of  the  coupe".  "  Why  does  he 
take  us  through  such  a  disgusting  street  ? "  she  de- 
manded, with  an  exasperation  of  which  her  husband 
divined  the  origin. 

"  This  driver  may  be  a  philanthropist  in  dis- 
guise," he  answered,  with  dreamy  irony,  "  and  may 
want  us  to  think  about  the  people  who  are  not 
merely  carried  through  this  street  in  a  coupe",  but 
have  to  spend  their  whole  lives  in  it,  winter  and 
summer,  with  no  hopes  of  driving  out  of  it,  except 
in  a  hearse.  I  must  say  they  don't  seem  to  mind 
it.  I  haven't  seen  a  jollier  crowd  anywhere  in  New 
York.  They  seem  to  have  forgotten  death  a  little 
more  completely  than  any  of  their  fellow-citizens, 
Isabel.  And  I  wonder  what  they  think  of  us, 
making  this  gorgeous  progress  through  their  midst. 
I  suppose  they  think  we  're  rich,  and  hate  us — if 
they  hate  rich  people ;  they  don't  look  as  if  they 
hated  anybody.  Should  we  be  as  patient  as  they 
are  with  their  discomfort  ?  I  don't  believe  there  's 
steam-heat  or  an  elevator  in  the  whole  block.  Seven 
rooms  and  a  bath  would  be  more  than  the  largest  and, 
genteelest  family  would  know  what  to  do  with.  They 
wouldn't  know  what  to  do  with  the  bath  anyway." 

His  monologue  seemed  to  interest  his  wife  apart 
from  the  satirical  point  it  had  for  themselves.  "You 
ought  to  get  Mr.  Fulkerson  to  let  you  work  some  of 
these  New  York  sights  up  for  Every  Other  Week, 

Basil ;  you  could  do  them  very  nicely." 
4.* 


82  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"Yes;  I've  thought  of  that.  But  don't  let's 
leave  the  personal  ground.  Doesn't  it  make  you 
feel  rather  small  and  otherwise  unworthy  when  you 
see  the  kind  of  street  these  fellow-beings  of  yours 
live  in,  and  then  think  how  particular  you  are  about 
locality  and  the  number  of  bell-pulls  1  I  don't  see 
even  ratchets  and  speaking-tubes  at  these  doors. ;> 
He  craned  his  neck  out  of  the  window  for  a  better 
look,  and  the  children  of  discomfort  cheered  him, 
out  of  sheer  good  feeling  and  high  spirits.  "  I  didn't 
know  I  was  so  popular.  Perhaps  it 's  a  recognition 
of  my  humane  sentiments." 

"  Oh,  it 's  very  easy  to  have  humane  sentiments, 
and  to  satirise  ourselves  for  wanting  eight  rooms 
and  a  bath  in  a  good  neighbourhood,  when  we  see 
how  these  wretched  creatures  live,"  said  his  wife. 
"  But  if  we  shared  all  we  have  with  them,  and  then 
settled  down  among  them,  what  good  would  it  do  ? " 

"  Not  the  least  in  the  world.  It  might  help  us 
for  the  moment,  but  it  wouldn't  keep  the  wolf  from 
their  doors  for  a  week ;  and  then  they  would  go  on 
just  as  before,  only  they  wouldn't  be  on  such  good 
terms  with  the  wolf.  The  only  way  for  them  is  to 
keep  up  an  unbroken  intimacy  with  the  wolf ;  then 
they  can  manage  him  somehow.  I  don't  know  how, 
and  I  'm  afraid  I  don't  want  to.  Wouldn't  you  like 
to  have  this  fellow  drive  us  round  among  the  halls 
of  pride  somewhere  for  a  little  while  1  Fifth  Avenue 
or  Madison,  up-town  1 " 

"  No  ;  we  've  no  time  to  waste.  I  've  got  a  place 
near  Third  Avenue,  on  a  nice  cross  street,  and  I 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  83 

want  him  to  take  us  there."  It  proved  that  she  had 
several  addresses  near  together,  and  it  seemed  best 
to  dismiss  their  coup6  and  do  the  rest  of  their  after- 
noon's work  on  foot.  It  came  to  nothing ;  she  was 
not  humbled  in  the  least  by  what  she  had  seen  in 
the  tenement-house  street ;  she  yielded  no  point  in 
her  ideal  of  a  flat,  and  the  flats  persistently  refused 
to  lend  themselves  to  it.  She  lost  all  patience  with 
them. 

"  Oh,  I  don't  say  the  flats  are  in  the  right  of  it," 
said  her  husband,  when  she  denounced  their  stupid 
inadequacy  to  the  purposes  of  a  Christian  home. 
"  But  I  'm  not  so  sure  that  we  are  either.  I  've 
been  thinking  about  that  home  business  ever  since 
my  sensibilities  were  dragged — in  a  coup6 — through 
that  tenement-house  street.  Of  course  no  child  born 
and  brought  up  in  such  a  place  as  that  could  have 
any  conception  of  home.  But  that 's  because  those 
poor  people  can't  give  character  to  their  habitations. 
They  have  to  take  what  they  can  get.  But  people 
like  us — that  is,  of  our  means — do  give  character  to 
the  average  flat.  It 's  made  to  meet  their  tastes,  or 
their  supposed  tastes ;  and  so  it 's  made  for  social 
show,  not  for  family  life  at  all.  Think  of  a  baby  in 
a  flat !  It 's  a  contradiction  in  terms ;  the  flat  is 
the  negation  of  motherhood.  The  flat  means  society 
life  ;  that  is,  the  pretence  of  social  life.  It 's  made 
to  give  artificial  people  a  society  basis  on  a  little 
money — too  much  money,  of  course,  for  what  they 
get.  So  the  cost  of  the  building  is  put  into  marble 
halls  and  idiotic  decoration  of  all  kinds.  I  don't 


84  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

object  to  the  conveniences,  but  none  of  these  flats 
have  a  living-room.  They  have  drawing-rooms  to 
foster  social  pretence,  and  they  have  dining-rooms 
and  bedrooms ;  but  they  have  no  room  where  the 
family  can  all  come  together  and  feel  the  sweetness 
of  being  a  family.  The  bedrooms  are  black-holes 
mostly,  with  a  sinful  waste  of  space  in  each.  If  it 
were  not  for  the  marble  halls,  and  the  decorations, 
and  the  foolishly  expensive  finish,  the  houses  could 
be  built  round  a  court,  and  the  flats  could  be  shaped 
something  like  a  Pompeiian  house,  with  small  sleep- 
ing closets — only  lit  from  the  outside — and  the  rest 
of  the  floor  thrown  into  two  or  three  large  cheerful 
halls,  where  all  the  family  life  could  go  on,  and 
society  could  be  transacted  unpretentiously.  Why, 
those  tenements  are  better  and  humaner  than  those 
flats  !  There  the  whole  family  lives  in  the  kitchen, 
and  has  its  consciousness  of  being ;  but  the  flat 
abolishes  the  family  consciousness.  It's  confine- 
ment without  coziness ;  it 's  cluttered  without  be- 
ing snug.  You  couldn't  keep  a  self-respecting  cat  in 
a  flat ;  you  couldn't  go  down  cellar  to  get  cider.  No  : 
the  Anglo-Saxon  home,  as  we  know  it  in  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  house,  is  simply  impossible  in  the  Franco- 
American  flat,  not  because  it 's  humble,  but  because 
it's  false." 

"Well,  then,"  said  Mrs.  March,  "let's  look  at 
houses." 

He  had  been  denouncing  the  flat  in  the  abstract, 
and  he  had  not  expected  this  concrete  result.  But 
he  said,  "  We  will  look  at  houses,  then." 


X. 


NOTHING  mystifies  a  man  more  than  a  woman's 
aberrations  from  some  point  at  which  he  supposes 
her  fixed  as  a  star.  In  these  unfurnished  houses, 
without  steam  or  elevator,  March  followed  his  wife 
about  with  patient  wonder.  She  rather  liked  the 
worst  of  them  best ;  but  she  made  him  go  down  into 
the  cellars  and  look  at  the  furnaces  ;  she  exacted 
from  him  a  rigid  inquest  of  the  plumbing.  She 
followed  him  into  one  of  the  cellars  by  the  fitful 
glare  of  successively  lighted  matches,  and  they 
enjoyed  a  moment  in  which  the  anomaly  of  their 
presence  there  on  that  errand,  so  remote  from  all 
the  facts  of  their  long-stablished  life  in  Boston, 
realised  itself  for  them. 

"  Think  how  easily  we  might  have  been  murdered 
and  nobody  been  any  the  wiser  !  "  she  said  when  they 
were  comfortably  out-doors  again. 

"Yes,  or  made  way  with  ourselves  in  an  access  of 
emotional  insanity,  supposed  to  have  been  induced 
by  unavailing  flat-hunting,"  he  suggested. 

She  fell  in  with  the  notion.  "I'm  beginning  to 
feel  crazy.  But  I  don 't  want  you  to  lose  your  head, 
Basil.  And  I  don't  want  you  to  sentimentalise  any 
G 


86  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

of  the  things  you  see  in  New  York.  I  think  you 
were  disposed  to  do  it  in  that  street  we  drove  through. 
I  don't  believe  there 's  any  real  suffering — not  real 
suffering — among  those  people  j  that  is,  it  would  be 
suffering  from  our  point  of  view,  but  they  Ve  been 
used  to  it  all  their  lives,  and  they  don't  feel  their 
discomfort  so  much." 

"  Of  course  I  understand  that,  and  I  don't  propose 
to  sentimentalise  them.  I  think  when  people  get 
used  to  a  bad  state  of  things  they  had  better  stick 
to  it ;  in  fact  they  don't  usually  like  a  better  state 
so  well,  and  I  shall  keep  that  firmly  in  mind." 

She  laughed  with  him,  and  they  walked  along  the 
L-bestridden  avenue,  exhilarated  by  their  escape 
from  murder  and  suicide  in  that  cellar,  toward  the 
nearest  cross-town  track,  which  they  meant  to  take 
home  to  their  hotel.  "  Now  to-night  we  will  go  to 
the  theatre,"  she  said,  "and  get  this  whole  house 
business  out  of  our  minds,  and  be  perfectly  fresh  for 
a  new  start  in  the  morning."  Suddenly  she  clutched 
his  arm.  "  Why,  did  you  see  that  man  ? "  and  she 
signed  with  her  head  toward  a  decently  dressed 
person  who  walked  beside  them,  next  the  gutter, 
stooping  over  as  if  to  examine  it,  and  half  halting  at 
times. 

"No.     What?" 

"  Why,  I  saw  him  pick  up  a  dirty  bit  of  cracker 
from  the  pavement  and  cram  it  into  his  mouth  and 
eat  it  down  as  if  he  were  famished.  And  look  !  he 's 
actually  hunting  for  more  in  those  garbage  heaps  ! " 

This  was  what  the  decent-looking  man  with  the 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  87 

hard  hands  and  broken  nails  of  a  workman  was 
doing — like  a  hungry  dog.  They  kept  up  with  him, 
in  the  fascination  of  the  sight,  to  the  next  corner, 
where  he  turned  down  the  side  street  still  searching 
the  gutter. 

They  walked  on  a  few  paces.  Then  March  said, 
"  I  must  go  after  him,"  and  left  his  wife  standing. 

"  Are  you  in  want — hungry  1 "  he  asked  the 
man. 

The  man  said  he  could  not  speak  English, 
monsieur. 

March  asked  his  question  in  French. 

The  man  shrugged  a  pitiful,  desperate  shrug, 
"  Mais,  monsieur " 

March  put  a  coin  in  his  hand,  and  then  suddenly 
the  man's  face  twisted  up ;  he  caught  the  hand  of 
this  alms-giver  in  both  of  his,  and  clung  to  it. 
"  Monsieur  !  monsieur  ! "  he  gasped,  and  the  tears 
rained  down  his  face. 

His  benefactor  pulled  himself  away,  shocked  and 
ashamed,  as  one  is  by  such  a  chance,  and  got  back 
to  his  wife,  and  the  man  lapsed  back  into  the 
mystery  of  misery  out  of  which  he  had  emerged. 

March  felt  it  laid  upon  him  to  console  his  wife  for 
what  had  happened.  "  Of  course  we  might  live 
here  for  years  and  not  see  another  case  like  that ; 
and  of  course  there  are  twenty  places  where  he 
could  have  gone  for  help  if  he  had  known  where  to 
find  them." 

"Ah,  but  it's  the  possibility  of  his  needing  the 
help  so  badly  as  that!"  she  answered.  "That's 


88  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

what  I  can't  bear,  and  I  shall  not  come  to  a  place 
where  such  things  are  possible,  and  we  may  as  well 
stop  our  house-hunting  here  at  once." 

"  Yes  1  And  what  part  of  Christendom  will  you 
live  in  ?  Such  things  are  possible  everywhere  in  our 
conditions." 

"  Then  we  must  change  the  conditions " 

*'  Oh  no  ;  we  must  go  to  the  theatre  and  forget 
them.  We  can  stop  at  Brentano's  for  our  tickets  as 
we  pass  through  Union  Square." 

"  I  am  not  going  to  the  theatre,  Basil.  I  am 
going  home  to  Boston  to-night.  You  can  stay  and 
find  a  flat," 

He  convinced  her  of  the  absurdity  of  her  position, 
and  even  of  its  selfishness  ;  but  she  said  that  her 
mind  was  quite  made  up  irrespective  of  what  had 
happened ;  that  she  had  been  away  from  the 
children  long  enough ;  that  she  ought  to  be  at  home 
to  finish  up  the  work  of  leaving  it.  The  word 
brought  a  sigh.  "  Ah,  I  don't  know  why  we  should 
see  nothing  but  sad  and  ugly  things  now.  When 
we  were  young " 

•/  O 

"  Younger,"  he  put  in.  "  We  're  still  young." 
"  That 's  what  we  pretend,  but  we  know  better. 
But  I  was  thinking  how  pretty  and  pleasant  things 
used  to  be  turning  up  all  the  time  on  our  travels  in 
the  old  days.  Why,  when  we  were  in  New  York 
here  on  our  wedding  journey  the  place  didn't  seem 
half  so  dirty  as  it  does  now,  and  none  of  these  dis- 
mal things  happened." 

"  It  was  a  good  deal  dirtier,"  he  answered  ;  "and_I 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  89 

fancy  worse  in  every  way — hungrier,  raggeder,  more 
wretchedly  housed.  But  that  wasn't  the  period  of 
life  for  us  to  notice  it.  Don't  you  remember, 
when  we  started  to  Niagara  the  last  time,  how 
everybody  seemed  middle-aged  and  commonplace; 
and  when  we  got  there  there  were  no  evident 
brides  ;  nothing  but  elderly  married  people  ]  " 

"  At  least  they  weren't  starving,"  she  rebelled. 

"  No,  you  don't  starve  in  parlour  cars  and  first- 
class  hotels ;  but  if  you  step  out  of  them  you  run 
your  chance  of  seeing  those  who  do,  if  you  're  get- 
ting on  pretty  well  in  the  forties.  If  it 's  the  un- 
happy who  see  unhappiness,  think  what  misery  must 
be  revealed  to  people  who  pass  their  lives  in  the 
really  squalid  tenement-house  streets — I  don't  mean 
picturesque  avenues  like  that  we  passed  through." 

"  But  we  are  not  unhappy,"  she  protested,  bring- 
ing the  talk  back  to  the  personal  base  again,  as 
women  must  to  get  any  good  out  of  talk.  "  We  're 
really  no  unhappier  than  we  were  when  we  were 
young." 

"  We  're  more  serious." 

"  Well,  I  hate  it ;  and  I  wish  you  wouldn't  be  so 
serious,  if  that 's  what  it  brings  us  to." 

"I  will  be  trivial  from  this  on,"  said  March. 
"  Shall  we  go  to  the  Hole  in  the  Ground  to-night  1 " 

"I  am  going  to  Boston." 

"  It 's  much  the  same  thing.  How  do  you  like  that 
for  triviality  1  It 's  a  little  blasphemous,  I  '11  allow." 

"  It 's  very  silly,"  she  said. 

At  the  hotel  they  found  a  letter  from  the  agent 


90  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

who  had  sent  them  the  permit  to  see  Mrs.  Gros- 
venor  Green's  apartment.  He  wrote  that  she  had 
heard  they  were  pleased  with  her  apartment,  and 
that  she  thought  she  could  make  the  terms  to  suit. 
She  had  taken  her  passage  for  Europe,  and  was  very 
anxious  to  let  the  flat  before  she  sailed.  She  would 
call  that  evening  at  seven. 

"  Mrs.  Grosvenor  Green ! "  said  Mrs.  March. 
"  Which  of  the  ten  thousand  flats  is  it,  Basil  1 " 

11  The  gimcrackery,"  he  answered.  "  In  the 
Xenophon,  you  know." 

"  Well,  she  may  save  herself  the  trouble.  I  shall 
not  see  her.  Or  yes — I  must  I  couldn't  go  away 
without  seeing  what  sort  of  creature  could  have 
planned  that  fly-away  flat.  She  must  be  a  perfect " 

"  Parachute,"  March  suggested. 

"No :  anybody  so  light  as  that  couldn't  come  down." 

"Well,  toy  balloon." 

"  Toy  balloon  will  do  for  the  present,"  Mrs.  March 
admitted.  "  But  I  feel  that  naught  but  herself  can 
be  her  parallel  for  volatility." 

When  Mrs.  Grosvenor  Green's  card  came  up  they 
both  descended  to  the  hotel  parlour,  which  March 
said  looked  like  the  saloon  of  a  Moorish  day-boat ; 
not  that  he  knew  of  any  such  craft,  but  the  decora- 
tions were  so  Saracenic  and  the  architecture  so 
Hudson  Riverish.  They  found  there  on  the  grand 
central  divan  a  large  lady  whose  vast  smoothness, 
placidity,  and  plumpness  set  at  defiance  all  their  pre- 
conceptions of  Mrs.  Grosvenor  Green,  so  that  Mrs. 
March  distinctly  paused  with  her  card  in  her  hand 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  91 

before  venturing  even  tentatively  to  address  her. 
Then  she  was  astonished  at  the  low  calm  voice  in 
which  Mrs.  Green  acknowledged  herself,  and  slowly 
proceeded  to  apologise  for  calling.  It  was  not  quite 
true  that  she  had  taken  her  passage  for  Europe,  but 
she  hoped  soon  to  do  so,  and  she  confessed  that  in 
the  meantime  she  was  anxious  to  let  her  flat.  She 
was  a  little  worn  out  with  the  care  of  house-keeping 
— Mrs.  March  breathed,  "  Oh  yes  ! "  in  the  sigh  with 
which  ladies  recognise  one  another's  martyrdom — 
and  Mr.  Green  had  business  abroad,  and  she  was 
going  to  pursue  her  art  studies  in  Paris ;  she  drew 
in  Mr.  Ilcomb's  class  now,  but  the  instruction  was 
so  much  better  in  Paris  ;  and  as  the  Superintendent 
seemed  to  think  the  price  was  the  only  objection, 
she  had  ventured  to  call. 

"  Then  we  didn't  deceive  him  in  the  least," 
thought  Mrs.  March,  while  she  answered  sweetly  : 
"  No ;  we  were  only  afraid  that  it  would  be  too 
small  for  our  family.  We  require  a  good  many 
rooms."  She  could  not  forego  the  opportunity  of 
saying,  "My  husband  is  coming  to  New  York  to 
take  charge  of  a  literary  periodical,  and  he  will 
have  to  have  a  room  to  write  in,"  which  made 
Mrs.  Green  bow  to  March,  and  made  March  look 
sheepish.  "But  we  did  think  the  apartment  very 
charming  (It  icas  architecturally  charming,"  she  pro- 
tested to  her  conscience),  "and  we  should  have  been 
so  glad  if  we  could  have  got  into  it."  She  followed 
this  with  some  account  of  their  house-hunting,  amid 
soft  murmurs  of  sympathy  from  Mrs.  Green,  who 


92  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

said  that  she  had  been  through  all  that,  and  that  if 
she  could  have  shown  her  apartment  to  them  she 
felt  sure  that  she  could  have  explained  it  so  that 
they  would  have  seen  its  capabilities  better.  Mrs. 
March  assented  to  this,  and  Mrs.  Green  added  that 
if  they  found  nothing  exactly  suitable  she  would  be 
glad  to  have  them,  look  at  it  again  ;  and  then  Mrs. 
March  said  that  she  was  going  back  to  Boston  her- 
self, but  she  was  leaving  Mr.  March  to  continue  the 
search,  and  she  had  no  doubt  he  would  be  only  too 
glad  to  see  the  apartment  by  daylight.  "  But  if 
you  take  it,  Basil,"  she  warned  him,  when  they  were 
alone,  "  I  shall  simply  renounce  you.  I  wouldn't 
live  in  that  junk  shop  if  you  gave  it  to  me.  But 
who  would  have  thought  she  was  that  kind  of  look- 
ing person  ?  Though  of  course  I  might  have  known 
if  I  had  stopped  to  think  once.  It 's  because  the 
place  doesn't  express  her  at  all  that  it 's  so  unlike 
her.  It  couldn't  be  like  anybody,  or  anything  that 
flies  in  the  air,  or  creeps  upon  the  earth,  or  swims 
in  the  waters  under  the  earth.  I  wonder  where  in 
the  world  she 's  from  ;  she 's  no  Xew- Yorker ;  even 
we  can  see  that ;  and  she 's  not  quite  a  country 
person  either ;  she  seems  like  a  person  from  some 
large  town,  where  she 's  been  an  aesthetic  authority. 
And  she  can't  find  good  enough  art  instruction  in 
New  York,  and  has  to  go  to  Paris  for  it !  Well,  it 's 
pathetic,  after  all,  Basil.  I  can't  help  feeling  sorry 
for  a  person  who  mistakes  herself  to  that  extent." 
"  I  can't  help  feeling  sorry  for  the  husband  of  a 
person  who  mistakes  herself  to  that  extent.  What 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  93 

is  Mr.  Grosvenor  Green  going  to  do  in  Paris  while 
she  's  working  her  way  into  the  Salon  ?  " 

"  Well,  you  keep  away  from  her  apartment,  Basil ; 
that 's  all  I  've  got  to  say  to  you.  And  yet  I  do  like 
some  things  about  her." 

"I  like  everything  about  her  but  her  apartment," 
said  March. 

"  I  like  her  going  to  be  out  of  the  country,"  said 
his  wife.  "  We  shouldn't  be  overlooked.  And  the 
place  was  prettily  shaped,  you  can't  deny  it.  And 
there  was  an  elevator  and  steam-heat.  And  the  loca- 
tion is  very  convenient.  And  there  was  a  hall-boy 
to  bring  up  cards.  The  halls  and  stairs  were  kept 
very  clean  and  nice.  But  it  wouldn't  do.  I  could 
put  you  a  folding  bed  in  the  room  where  you  wrote, 
and  we  could  even  have  one  in  the  parlour " 

"  Behind  a  portiere  1  I  couldn't  stand  any  more 
portieres  ! " 

"And  we  could  squeeze  the  two  girls  into  one 
room,  or  perhaps  only  bring  Margaret,  and  put  out 
the  whole  of  the  wash.  Basil !  "  she  almost  shrieked, 
"  it  isn't  to  be  thought  of  !  " 

He  retorted,  "  I  'm  not  thinking  of  it,  my  dear." 

Fulkerson  came  in  just  before  they  started  for  Mrs. 
March's  train,  to  find  out  what  had  become  of  them, 
he  said,  and  to  see  whether  they  had  got  anything 
to  live  in  yet. 

"  Not  a  thing,"  she  said.  "  And  I  'm  just  going 
back  to  Boston,  and  leaving  Mr.  March  here  to  do 
anything  he  pleases  about  it.  He  has  carte  blanche." 

"But  freedom   brings  responsibility,  you   know, 


94  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

Fulkerson,  and  it 's  the  same  as  if  I  'd  no  choice.  I  'm 
staying  behind  because  I  'm  left,  not  because  I  expect 
to  do  anything." 

"  Is  that  so  ] "  asked  Fulkerson.  "  Well,  we  must 
see  what  can  be  done.  I  supposed  you  would  be  all 
settled  by  this  time,  or  I  should  have  humped  myself 
to  find  you  something.  None  of  those  places  I  gave 
you  amount  to  anything  ? " 

"  As  much  as  forty  thousand  others  we  Ve  looked 
at,"  said  Mrs.  March.  "Yes,  one  of  them  does 
amount  to  something.  It  comes  so  near  being  what 
we  want  that  I  've  given  Mr.  March  particular  in- 
structions not  to  go  near  it." 

She  told  him  about  Mrs.  Grosvenor  Green  and  her 
flats,  and  at  the  end  he  said — 

"  Well,  well,  we  must  look  out  for  that.  I  '11  keep 
an  eye  on  him,  Mrs.  March,  and  see  that  he  doesn't 
do  anything  rash,  and  I  won't  leave  him  till  he 's 
found  just  the  right  thing.  It  exists,  of  course ;  it 
must  in  a  city  of  eighteen  hundred  thousand  people, 
and  the  only  question  is  where  to  find  it.  You  leave 
him  to  me,  Mrs.  March  ;  I  '11  watch  out  for  him." 

Fulkerson  showed  some  signs  of  going  to  the 
station  when  he  found  they  -\vere  not  driving,  but 
she  bade  him  a  peremptory  good-bye  at  the  hotel  door. 

"He's  very  nice,  Basil,  and  his  way  with  you  is 
perfectly  charming.  It 's  very  sweet  to  see  how 
really  fond  of  you  he  is.  But  I  didn't  want  him 
stringing  along  up  to  Forty-second  Street  with  us, 
and  spoiling  our  last  moments  together." 

At   Third  Avenue  they   took   the  Elevated,  for 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  95 

which  she  confessed  an  infatuation.  She  declared  it 
the  most  ideal  way  of  getting  about  in  the  world, 
and  was  not  ashamed  when  he  reminded  her  of  how 
she  used  to  say  that  nothing  under  the  sun  could 
induce  her  to  travel  on  it.  She  now  said  that  the 
night  transit  was  even  more  interesting  than  the 
day,  and  that  the  fleeting  intimacy  you  formed  with 
people  in  second  and  third  floor  interiors,  while  all 
the  usual  street  life  went  on  underneath,  had  a 
domestic  intensity  mixed  with  a  perfect  repose  that 
was  the  last  effect  of  good  society  with  all  its  security 
and  exclusiveness.  He  said  it  was  better  than  the 
theatre,  of  which  it  reminded  him,  to  see  those 
people  through  their  windows  :  a  family  party  of 
work-folk  at  a  late  tea,  some  of  the  men  in  their 
shirt  sleeves  ;  a  woman  sewing  by  a  lamp  ;  a  mother 
laying  her  child  in  its  cradle ;  a  man  with  his  head 
fallen  on  his  hands  upon  a  table ;  a  girl  and  her 
lover  leaning  over  the  window-sill  together.  What 
suggestion  !  what  drama !  what  infinite  interest ! 
At  the  Forty-second  Street  station  they  stopped  a 
minute  on  the  bridge  that  crosses  the  track  to  the 
branch  road  for  the  Central  Depot,  and  looked  up 
and  down  the  long  stretch  of  the  elevated  to  north 
and  south.  The  track  that  found  and  lost  itself  a 
thousand  times  in  the  flare  and  tremor  of  the  innu- 
merable lights ;  the  moony  sheen  of  the  electrics 
mixing  with  the  reddish  points  and  blots  of  gas  far 
and  near;  the  architectural  shapes  of  houses  and 
churches  and  towers,  rescued  by  the  obscurity  from 
all  that  was  ignoble  in  them,  and  the  coming  and 


96  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

going  of  the  trains  marking  the  stations  with  vivider 
or  fainter  plumes  of  flame-shot  steam — formed  an 
incomparable  perspective.  They  often  talked  after- 
ward of  the  superb  spectacle,  which  in  a  city  full  of 
painters  nightly  works  its  unrecorded  miracles  ;  and 
they  were  just  to  the  Arachne  roof  spun  in  iron 
over  the  cross  street  on  which  they  ran  to  the  depot ; 
but  for  the  present  they  were  mostly  inarticulate 
before  it.  They  had  another  moment  of  rich  silence 
when  they  paused  in  the  gallery  that  leads  from  the 
elevated  station  to  the  waiting-rooms  in  the  Central 
Depot  and  looked  down  upon  the  great  night  trains 
lying  on  the  tracks  dim  under  the  rain  of  gas-lights 
that  starred  without  dispersing  the  vast  darkness  of 
the  place.  What  forces,  what  fates,  slept  in  these 
bulks  which  would  soon  be  hurling  themselves  north 
and  east  and  west  through  the  night !  Now  they 
waited  there  like  fabled  monsters  of  Arab  story  ready 
for  the  magician's  touch,  tractable,  reckless,  will-less 
— organised  lifelessness  full  of  a  strange  semblance 
of  life. 

The  Marches  admired  the  impressive  sight  with  a 
thrill  of  patriotic  pride  in  the  fact  that  the  whole 
world  perhaps  could  not  afford  just  the  like.  Then 
they  hurried  down  to  the  ticket  offices,  and  he  got 
her  a  lower  berth  in  the  Boston  sleeper,  a"nd  went 
with  her  to  the  car.  They  made  the  most  of  the 
fact  that  her  berth  was  in  the  very  middle  of  the 
car ;  and  she  promised  to  write  as  soon  as  she  reached 
home.  She  promised  also  that  having  seen  the 
limitations  of  New  York  in  respect  to  flats,  she 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  97 

would  not  be  hard  on  him  if  he  took  something  not 
quite  ideal  Only  he  must  remember  that  it  was 
not  to  be  above  Twentieth  Street  nor  below  Wash- 
ington Square ;  it  must  not  be  higher  than  the  third 
floor;  it  must  have  an  elevator,  steam-heat,  hall- 
boys,  and  a  pleasant  janitor.  These  were  essentials ; 
if  he  could  not  get  them,  then  they  must  do  without. 
But  he  must  get  them. 
VOL.  L— 5 


XL 


MRS.  MARCH  was  one  of  those  wives  who  exact  a 
more  rigid  adherence  to  their  ideals  from  their  hus- 
bands than  from  themselves.  Early  in  their  married 
life  she  had  taken  charge  of  him  in  all  matters  which 
she  considered  practical.  She  did  not  include  the 
business  of  bread-winning  in  these ;  that  was  an 
affair  that  might  safely  be  left  to  his  absent-minded, 
dreamy  inefficiency,  and  she  did  not  interfere  with 
him  there.  But  in  such  things  as  rehanging  the  pic- 
tures, deciding  on  a  summer  boarding-place,  taking  a 
seaside  cottage,  repapering  rooms,  choosing  seats  at 
the  theatre,  seeing  what  the  children  ate  when  she 
was  not  at  table,  shutting  the  cat  out  at  night,  keep- 
ing run  of  calls  and  invitations,  and  seeing  if  the  fur- 
nace was  damped,  he  had  failed  her  so  often  that  she 
felt  she  cou'd  not  leave  him  the  slightest  discretion 
in  regard  to  a  flat.  Her  total  distrust  of  his  judg- 
ment in  the  matters  cited  and  others  like  them  con- 
sisted with  the  greatest  admiration  of  his  mind  and 
respect  for  his  character.  She  often  said  that  if  he 
would  only  bring  them  to  bear  in  such  exigencies  he 
would  be  simply  perfect ;  but  she  had  long  given  up 
his  ever  doing  so.  She  subjected  him,  therefore,  to 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  99 

an  iron  code,  but  after  proclaiming  it  she  was  apt  to 
abandon  him  to  the  native  lawlessness  of  his  tem- 
perament. She  expected  him  in  this  event  to  do  as 
he  pleased,  and  she  resigned  herself  to  it  with  con- 
siderable comfort  in  holding  him  accountable.  He 
learned  to  expect  this,  and  after  suffering  keenly 
from  her  disappointment  with  whatever  he  did  he 
waited  patiently  till  she  forgot  her  grievance  and 
began  to  extract  what  consolation  lurks  in  the  irre- 
parable. She  would  almost  admit  at  moments  that 
what  he  had  done  was  a  very  good  thing,  but  she 
reserved  the  right  to  return  in  full  force  to  her 
original  condemnation  of  it;  and  she  accumulated 
each  act  of  independent  volition  in  witness  and 
warning  against  him.  Their  mass  oppressed  but 
never  deterred  him.  He  expected  to  do  the  wrong 
thing  when  left  to  his  own  devices,  and  he  did  it 
without  any  apparent  recollection  of  his  former  mis- 
deeds and  their  consequences.  There  was  a  good 
deal  of  comedy  in  it  all,  and  some  tragedy. 

He  now  experienced  a  certain  expansion,  such  as 
husbands  of  his  kind  will  imagine,  on  going  back  to 
his  hotel  alone.  It  was,  perhaps,  a  revulsion  from 
the  pain  of  parting;  and  he  toyed  with  the  idea 
of  Mrs.  Grosvenor  Green's  apartment,  which,  in  its 
preposterous  unsuitability,  had  a  strange  attraction. 
He  felt  that  he  could  take  it  with  less  risk  than 
anything  else  they  had  seen,  but  he  said  he  would 
look  at  all  the  other  places  in  town  first.  He  really 
spent  the  greater  part  of  the  next  day  in  hunting  up 
the  owner  of  an  apartment  that  had  neither  steam- 


100        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

heat  nor  an  elevator,  but  was  otherwise  perfect,  and 
trying  to  get  him  to  take  less  than  the  agent  asked. 
By  a  curious  psychical  operation  he  was  able,  in  the 
transaction,  to  work  himself  into  quite  a  passionate 
desire  for  the  apartment,  while  he  held  the  Gros- 
venor  Green  apartment  in  the  background  of  his 
mind  as  something  that  he  could  return  to  as  alto- 
gether more  suitable.  He  conducted  some  simul- 
taneous negotiation  for  a  furnished  house,  which 
enhanced  still  more  the  desirability  of  the  Grosvenor 
Green  apartment.  Toward  evening  he  went  off  at 
a  tangent  far  up-town,  so  as'  to  be  able  to  tell  his 
wife  how  utterly  preposterous  the  best  there  would 
be  as  compared  even  with  this  ridiculous  Grosvenor 
Green  gimcrackery.  It  is  hard  to  report  the  pro- 
cesses of  his  sophistication ;  perhaps  this,  again, 
may  best  be  left  to  the  marital  imagination. 

He  rang  at  the  last  of  these  up-town  apartments 
as  it  was  falling  dusk,  and  it  was  long  before  the 
janitor  appeared.  Then  the  man  was  very  surly, 
and  said  if  he  looked  at  the  flat  now  he  would  say 
it  was  too  dark,  like  all  the  rest.  His  reluctance 
irritated  March  in  proportion  to  his  insincerity  in 
proposing  to  look  at  it  at  all.  He  knew  he  did  not 
mean  to  take  it  under  any  circumstances ;  that  he 
was  going  to  use  his  inspection  of  it  in  dishonest 
justification  of  his  disobedience  to  his  wife  ;  but  he 
put  on  an  air  of  offended  dignity.  "If  you  don't 
wish  to  show  the  apartment,"  he  said,  "  I  don't  care 
to  see  it." 

The  man  groaned,  for  he  was  heavy,  and  no  doubt 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       101 

dreaded  the  stairs.  He  scratched  a  match  on  his 
thigh,  and  led  the  way  up.  March  was  sorry  for 
him,  and  he  put  his  fingers  on  a  quarter  in  his 
waistcoat-pocket  to  give  him  at  parting.  At  the 
same  time,  he  had  to  trump  up  an  objection  to  the 
flat.  This  was  easy,  for  it  was  advertised  as  con- 
taining ten  rooms,  and  he  found  the  number  eked 
out  with  the  bath-room  and  two  large  closets.  "  It 's 
light  enough,"  said  March,  "but  I  don't  see  how  you 
make  out  ten  rooms." 

"  There 's  ten  rooms,"  said  the  man,  deigning  no 
proof. 

March  took  his  fingers  off  the  quarter,  and  went 
downstairs  and  out  of  the  door  without  another 
word.  It  would  be  wrong,  it  would  be  impossible, 
to  give  the  man  anything  after  such  insolence.  He 
reflected,  with  shame,  that  it  was  also  cheaper  to 
punish  than  forgive  him. 

He  returned  to  his  hotel  prepared  for  any 
desperate  measure,  and  convinced  now  that  the 
Grosvenor  Green  apartment  was  not  merely  the 
only  thing  left  for  him,  but  was,  on  its  own  merits, 
the  best  thing  in  New  York. 

Fulkerson  was  waiting  for  him  in  the  reading-room, 
and  it  gave  March  the  curious  thrill  with  which  a 
man  closes  with  temptation  when  he  said  :  "  Look 
here  !  Why  don't  you  take  that  woman's  flat  in  the 
Xenophon  ?  She 's  been  at  the  agents  again,  and 
they  Ve  been  at  me.  She  likes  your  look — or  Mrs. 
March's — and  I  guess  you  can  have  it  at  a  pretty 
heavy  discount  from  the  original  price.  I  'm  author- 
H 


102       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

ised  to  say  you  can  have  it  for  one  seventy-five  a 
month,  and  I  don't  believe  it  would  be  safe  for  you 
to  offer  one  fifty." 

March  shook  his  head,  and  dropped  a  mask  of 
virtuous  rejection  over  his  corrupt  acquiescence. 
"  It 's  too  small  for  us — we  couldn't  squeeze  into  it." 

"  Why,  look  here  !  "  Fulkerson  persisted.  "  How 
many  rooms  do  you  people  want  ? " 

"  I  've  got  to  have  a  place  to  work " 

"  Of  course  !  And  you  Ve  got  to  have  it  at  the 
Fifth  Wheel  office." 

"I  hadn't  thought  of  that,"  March  began.  "I 
suppose  I  could  do  my  work  at  the  office,  as  there 's 
not  much  writing " 

"  Why,  of  course  you  can't  do  your  work  at  home. 
You  just  come  round  with  me  now,  and  look  at  that 
flat  again." 

"No;  I  can't  do  it." 

"Why?" 

"  I— I  Ve  got  to  dine." 

"  All  right,"  said  Fulkerson.  "  Dine  with  me.  I 
want  to  take  you  round  to  a  little  Italian  place  that 
I  know."  . 

One  may  trace  the  successive  steps  of  March's 
descent  in  this  simple  matter  with  the  same  edifica- 
tion that  would  attend  the  study  of  the  self-delusions 
and  obfuscations  of  a  man  tempted  to  crime.  The 
process  is  probably  not  at  all  different,  and  to  the 
philosophical  mind  the  kind  of  result  is  unimpor- 
tant ;  the  process  is  everything. 

Fulkerson    led    him   down   one   block   and    half 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       103 

across  another  to  the  steps  of  a  small  dwelling-house, 
transformed,  like  many  others,  into  a  restaurant 
of  the  Latin  ideal,  with  little  or  no  structural 
change  from  the  pattern  of  the  lower  middle-class 
New  York  home.  There  were  the  corroded  brown- 
stone  steps,  the  mean  little  front  door,  and  the 
cramped  entry  with  its  narrow  stairs  by  which 
ladies  could  go  up  to  a  dining-room  appointed  for 
them  on  the  second  floor ;  the  parlours  on  the  first 
were  set  about  with  tables,  where  men  smoked 
cigarettes  between  the  courses,  and  a  single  waiter 
ran  swiftly  to  and  fro  with  plates  and  dishes,  and 
exchanged  unintelligible  outcries  with  a  cook  be- 
yond a  slide  in  the  back  parlour.  He  rushed  at  the 
new-comers,  brushed  the  soiled  table-cloth?  before 
them  with  a  towel  on  his  arm,  covered  its  worst 
stains  with  a  napkin,  and  brought  them,  in  their 
order,  the  vermicelli  soup,  the  fried  fish,  the  cheese- 
strewn  spaghetti,  the  veal  cutlets,  the  tepid  roast 
fowl  and  salad,  and  the  wizened  pear  and  coffee 
which  form  the  dinner  at  such  places. 

"  Ah,  this  is  nice ! "  said  Fulkerson,  after  the 
laying  of  the  charitable  napkin,  and  he  began  to 
recognise  acquaintances,  some  of  whom  he  described 
to  March  as  young  literary  men  and  artists  with 
whom  they  should  probably  have  to  do ;  others 
were  simply  frequenters  of  the  place,  and  were  of 
all  nationalities  and  religions  apparently — at  least, 
several  were  Hebrews  and  Cubans.  "You  get  a 
pretty  good  slice  of  New  York  here,"  he  said,  "  all 
except  the  frosting  on  top.  That  you  Avon't  find 


104       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

much  at  Maroni's,  though  you  will  occasionally.  I 
don't  mean  the  ladies  ever,  of  course."  The  ladies 
present  seemed  harmless  and  reputable  looking 
people  enough,  but  certainly  they  were  not  of  the 
first  fashion,  and,  except  in  a  few  instances,  not 
Americans.  "  It 's  like  cutting  straight  down 
through  a  fruit-cake,"  Fulkerson  went  on,  "  or  a 
mince-pie,  when  you  don't  know  who  made  the  pie ; 
you  get  a  little  of  everything."  He  ordered  a  small 
flask  of  Chianti  with  the  dinner,  and  it  came  in 
its  pretty  wicker  jacket.  March  smiled  upon  it 
with  tender  reminiscence,  and  Fulkerson  laughed. 
"  Lights  you  up  a  little.  I  brought  old  Dryfoos 
here  one  day,  and  he  thought  it  was  sweet-oil  j 
that 's  the  kind  of  bottle  they  used  to  have  it  in  at 
the  country  drug-stores." 

"  Yes,  I  remember  now  ;  but  I  M  totally  forgotten 
it,"  said  March.  "  How  far  back  that  goes  !  Who 's 
Dryfoos  ? " 

"  Dryfoos  ? "  Fulkerson,  still  smiling,  tore  off  a 
piece  of  the  half-yard  of  French  loaf  which  had  been 
supplied  them,  with  two  pale,  thin  disks  of  butter, 
and  fed  it  into  himself.  "Old  Dryfoos  ]  Well,  of 
course !  I  call  him  old,  but  he  ain't  so  very. 
About  fifty,  or  along  there." 

"  No,"  said  March,  "  that  isn't  very  old — or  not 
so  old  as  it  used  to  be." 

"Well,  I  suppose  you've  got  to  know  about  him, 
anyway,"  said  Fulkerson  thoughtfully.  "  And  I  've 
been  wondering  just  how  I  should  tell  you.  Can't 
always  make  out  exactly  how  much  of  a  Bostonian 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        105 

you  really  are !  Ever  been  out  in  the  natural  gas 
c6uritry  ?  " 

"  No,"  said  March.  "  I  've  had  a  good  deal  of 
curiosity  about  it,  but  I  Ve  never  been  able  to  get 
away  except  in  summer,  and  then  we  always  pre- 
ferred to  go  over  the  old  ground,  out  to  Niagara 
and  back  through  Canada,  the  route  we  took  on  our 
wedding  journey.  The  children  like  it  as  much  as 
we  do." 

"  Yes,  yes,"  said  Fulkerson.  "  Well,  the  natural 
gas  country  is  worth  seeing.  I  don't  mean  the 
Pittsburg  gas-fields,  but  out  in  Northern  Ohio  and 
Indiana  around  Moffitt — that 's  the  place  in  the 
heart  of  the  gas  region  that  they  Ve  been  booming 
so.  Yes,  you  ought  to  see  that  country.  If  you 
haven't  been  West  for  a  good  many  years,  you 
haven't  got  any  idea  how  old  the  country  looks. 
You  remember  how  the  fields  used  to  be  all  full  of 
stumps  ? " 

"I  should  think  so." 

"  Well,  you  won't  see  any  stumps  now.  All  that 
country  out  around  Moffitt  is  just  as  smooth  as  a 
checker-board,  and  looks  as  old  as  England.  You 
know  how  we  used  to  burn  the  stumps  out ;  and 
then  somebody  invented  a  stump-extracter,  and  we 
pulled  them  out  with  a  yoke  of  oxen.  Now  they 
just  touch  'em  off  with  a  little  dynamite,  and  they  Ve 
got  a  cellar  dug  and  filled  up  with  kindling  ready 
for  house-keeping  whenever  you  want  it.  Only 
they  haven't  got  any  use  for  kindling  in  that  country 
— all  gas.  I  rode  along  on  the  cars  through  those 
5* 


106       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

level  black  fields  at  corn-planting  time,  and  every 
once  in  a  while  I'd  come  to  a  place  with  a  piece *of 
ragged  old  stove-pipe  stickin'  up  out  of  the  ground, 
and  blazing  away  like  forty,  and  a  fellow  ploughing 
all  round  it  and  not  minding  it  any  more  than  if  it 
was  spring  violets.  Horses  didn't  notice  it,  either. 
Well,  they  Ve  always  known  about  the  gas  out  there ; 
they  say  there  are  places  in  the  woods  where  it 's 
been  burning  ever  since  the  country  was  settled. 

"  But  when  you  come  in  sight  of  Moffitt — my,  oh 
my  !  Well,  you  come  in  smell  of  it  about  as  soon. 
That  gas  out  there  ain't  odourless,  like  the  Pittsburg 
gas,  and  so  it 's  perfectly  safe ;  but  the  smell  isn't 
bad — about  as  bad  as  the  finest  kind  of  benzine. 
Well,  the  first  thing  that  strikes  you  when  you 
come  to  Moffitt  is  the  notion  that  there  has  been  a 
good  warm,  growing  rain,  and  the  town 's  come  up 
overnight  That 's  in  the  suburbs,  the  annexes,  and 
additions.  But  it  ain't  shabby — no  shanty-town 
business ;  nice  brick  and  frame  houses,  some  of  'em 
Queen  Anne  style,  and  all  of  'cm  looking  as  if  they 
had  come  to  stay.  And  when  you  drive  up  from 
the  dep6t  you  think  everybody 's  moving.  Every- 
thing seems  to  be  piled  into  the  street ;  old  houses 
made  over,  and  new  ones  going  up  everywhere.  You 
know  the  kind  of  street  Main  Street  always  used  to 
be  in  our  section — half  plank-road  and  turnpike,  and 
the  rest  mud-hole,  and  a  lot  of  stores  and  doggeries 
strung  along  with  false  fronts  a  story  higher  than 
the  back,  and  here  and  there  a  decent  building  with 
the  gable  end  to  the  public;  and  a  court-house  and 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        107 

jail  and  two  taverns  and  three  or  four  churches. 
Well,  they  're  all  there  in  Moffitt  yet,  but  architecture 
has  struck  it  hard,  and  they  Ve  got  a  lot  of  new 
buildings  that  needn't  be  ashamed  of  themselves 
anywhere ;  the  new  court-house  is  as  big  as  St. 
Peter's,  and  the  Grand  Opera-house  is  in  the  highest 
style  of  the  art.  You  can't  buy  a  lot  on  that  street 
for  much  less  than  you  can  buy  a  lot  in  New  York 
— or  you  couldn't  when  the  boom  was  on;  I  saw 
the  place  just  when  the  boom  was  in  its  prime.  I 
went  out  there  to  work  the  newspapers  in  the 
syndicate  business,  and  I  got  one  of  their  men  to 
write  me  a  real  bright,  snappy  account  of  the  gas ; 
and  they  just  took  me  in  their  arms  and  showed  me 
everything.  Well,  it  was  wonderful,  and  it  was 
beautiful,  too !  To  see  a  whole  community  stirred  up 
like  that  was — just  like  a  big  boy,  all  hope  and  high 
spirits,  and  no  discount  on  the  remotest  future ; 
nothing  but  perpetual  boom  to  the  end  of  time — I 
tell  you  it  warmed  your  blood.  Why,  there  were 
some  things  about  it  that  made  you  think  what  a 
nice  kind  of  world  this  would  be  if  people  ever  took 
hold  together,  instead  of  each  fellow  fighting  it  out 
on  his  own  hook,  and  devil  take  the  hindmost.  They 
made  up  their  minds  at  Moffitt  that  if  they  wanted 
their  town  to  grow  they  'd  got  to  keep  their  gas 
public  property.  So  they  extended  their  corporation 
line  so  as  to  take  in  pretty  much  the  whole  gas 
region  round  there ;  and  then  the  city  took  posses- 
sion of  every  well  that  was  put  down,  and  held  it 
for  the  common  good.  Anybody  that 's  a  mind  to 


108       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

come  to  Moffitt  and  start  any  kind  of  manufacture 
can  have  all  the  gas  he  wants  free ;  and  for  fifteen 
dollars  a  year  you  can  have  all  the  gas  you  want  to 
heat  and  light  your  private  house.  The  people  hold 
on  to  it  for  themselves,  and,  as  I  say,  it 's  a  grand 
sight  to  see  a  whole  community  hanging  together 
and  working  for  the  good  of  all,  instead  of  splitting 
up  into  as  many  different  cut-throats  as  there  are 
able-bodied  citizens.  See  that  fellow  *? "  Fulkerson 
broke  off,  and  indicated  with  a  twirl  of  his  head  a 
short,  dark,  foreign-looking  man  going  out  of  the 
door.  "  They  say  that  fellow 's  a  Socialist.  I  think 
it 's  a  shame  they  're  allowed  to  come  here.  If  they 
don't  like  the  way  we  manage  our  affairs,  let  'em 
stay  at  home,"  Fulkerson  continued.  "They  do  a 
lot  of  mischief,  shooting  off  their  mouths  round  here. 
I  believe  in  free  speech  and  all  that ;  but  I  'd  like 
to  see  these  fellows  shut  up  in  jail  and  left  to  jaw 
each  other  to  death.  We  don't  want  any  of  their 
poison." 

March  did  not  notice  the  vanishing  Socialist.  He 
was  watching,  with  a  teasing  sense  of  familiarity,  a 
tall,  shabbily  dressed,  elderly  man,  who  had  just 
come  in.  He  had  the  aquiline  profile  uncommon 
among  Germans,  and  yet  March  recognised  him  at 
once  as  German.  His  long,  soft  beard  and  moustache 
had  once  been  fair,  and  they  kept  some  tone  of  their 
yellow  in  the  gray  to  which  they  had  turned.  His 
eyes  were  full,  and  his  lips  and  chin  shaped  the  beard 
to  the  noble  outline  which  shows  in  the  beards  the 
Italian  masters  liked  to  paint  for  their  Last  Suppers. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  109 

His  carriage  was  erect  and  soldierly,  and  March 
presently  saw  that  he  had  lost  his  left  hand.  He 
took  his  place  at  a  table  where  the  overworked 
waiter  found  time  to  cut  up  his  meat,  and  put 
-everything  in  easy  reach  of  his  right  hand. 

"  Well,"  Fulkerson  resumed,  "  they  took  me  round 
everywhere  in  Moffitt,  and  showed  me  their  big 
wells — lit  'em  up  for  a  private  view,  and  let  me  hear 
them  purr  with  the  soft  accents  of  a  mass-meeting 
of  locomotives.  Why,  when  they  let  one  of  these 
wells  loose  in  a  meadow  that  they  'd  piped  it  into 
temporarily,  it  drove  the  flame  away  forty  feet  from 
the  mouth  of  the  pipe  and  blew  it  over  half  an  acre 
of  ground.  They  say  when  they  let  one  of  their 
big  wells  burn  away  all  winter  before  they  had 
learned  how  to  control  it,  that  well  kept  up  a  little 
summer  all  around  it ;  the  grass  stayed  green,  and 
the  flowers  bloomed  all  through  the  winter.  /  don't 
know  whether  it's  so  or  not.  But  I  can  believe 
anything  of  natural  gas.  My  !  but  it  was  beautiful 
when  they  turned  on  the  full  force  of  that  well  and 
shot  a  roman  candle  into  the  gas — that 's  the  way 
they  light  it — and  a  plume  of  fire  about  twenty  feet 
wide  and  seventy-five  feet  high,  all  red  and  yellow 
and  violet,  jumped  into  the  sky,  and  that  big  roar 
shook  the  ground  under  your  feet !  You  felt  like 
saying,  'Don't  trouble  yourself;  I'm  perfectly  con- 
vinced. I  believe  in  Moffitt.'  We-e-e-ll! "  drawled 
Fulkerson,  with  a  long  breath,  "  that  V  where  I  met 
old  Dryfoos." 

"  Oh  yes  ! — Dryfoos,"  said  March.     He  observed 


110  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

that  the  waiter  had  brought  the  old   one-handed 
German  a  towering  glass  of  beer. 

"  Yes,"  Fulkerson  laughed.  "  We  Ve  got  round 
to  Dryfoos  again.  I  thought  I  could  cut  a  long 
story  short,  but  I  seem  to  be  cutting  a  short  story 
long.  If  you  're  not  in  a  hurry,  though — 

"  Not  in  the  least.  Go  on  as  long  as  you  like." 
"  I  met  him  there  in  the  office  of  a  real-estate  man 
— speculator,  of  course  ;  everybody  was,  in  Moffitt ; 
but  a  first-rate  fellow,  and  public-spirited  as  all  get- 
out  ;  and  when  Dryfoos  left  he  told  me  about  him. 
Dryfoos  was  an  old  Pennsylvania  Dutch  farmer, 
about  three  or  four  miles  out  of  Moffitt,  and  he  'd 
lived  there  pretty  much  all  his  life ;  father  was  one 
of  the  first  settlers.  Everybody  knew  he  had  the 
right  stuff  in  him,  but  he  was  slower  than  molasses 
in  January,  like  those  Pennsylvania  Dutch.  He  'd 
got  together  the  largest  and  handsomest  farm  any- 
where around  there ;  and  he  was  making  money  on 
it,  just  like  he  was  in  some  business  somewhere  ; 
he  was  a  very  intelligent  man ;  he  took  the  papers 
and  kept  himself  posted ;  but  he  was  awfully  old- 
fashioned  in  his  ideas.  He  hung  on  to  the  doctrines 
as  well  as  the  dollars  of  the  dads ;  it  was  a  real 
thing  with  him.  Well,  when  the  boom  began  to 
come  he  hated  it  awfully,  and  he  fought  it.  He 
used  to  write  communications  to  the  weekly  news- 
paper in  Moffitt — they've  got  three  dailies  there 
now — and  throw  cold  water  on  the  boom.  He 
couldn't  catch  on  no  way.  It  made  him  sick  to 
hear  the  clack  that  went  on  about  the  gas  the 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       Ill 

whole  while,  and  that  stirred  up  the  neighbour- 
hood and  got  into  his  family.  Whenever  he'd 
hear  of  a  man  that  had  been  offered  a  big  price 
for  his  land  and  was  going  to  sell  out  and  move 
into  town,  he  'd  go  and  labour  with  him  and  try  to 
talk  him  out  of  it,  and  tell  him  how  long  his  fifteen 
or  twenty  thousand  would  last  him  to  live  on,  and 
shake  the  Standard  Oil  Company  before  him,  and 
try  to  make  him  believe  it  wouldn't  be  five  years 
before  the  Standard  owned  the  whole  region. 

"Of  course  he  couldn't  do  anything  with  them. 
"When  a  man 's  offered  a  big  price  for  his  farm,  he 
•don't  care  whether  it 's  by  a  secret  emissary  from 
the  Standard  Oil  or  not ;  he 's  going  to  sell  and  get 
the  better  of  the  other  fellow  if  he  can.  Dryfoos 
•couldn't  keep  the  boom  out  of  his  own  family  even. 
His  wife  was  with  him.  She  thought  whatever  he 
said  and  did  was  just  as  right  as  if  it  had  been 
thundered  down  from  Sinai.  But  the  young  folks 
were  sceptical,  especially  the  girls  that  had  been 
away  to  school.  The  boy  that  had  been  kept  at 
home  because  he  couldn't  be  spared  from  helping 
his  father  manage  the  farm  was  more  like  him,  but 
they  contrived  to  stir  the  boy  up  with  the  hot  end 
of  the  boom  too.  So  when  a  fellow  came  along  one 
day  and  offered  old  Dryfoos  a  cool  hundred  thousand 
for  his  farm,  it  was  all  up  with  Dryfoos.  He  'd  V 
liked  to  'a'  kept  the  offer  to  himself  and  not  done 
anything  about  it,  but  his  vanity  wouldn't  let  him 
do  that ;  and  when  he  let  it  out  in  his  family  the 
girls  outvoted  him.  They  just  made  him  sell. 


112  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  He  wouldn't  sell  all.  He  kept  about  eighty 
acres  that  was  off  in  one  piece  by  itself,  but  the 
three  hundred  that  had  the  old  brick  house  on  it, 
and  the  big  barn — that  went,  and  Dryfoos  bought 
him  a  place  in  Moffitt  and  moved  into  town  to  live 
on  the  interest  of  his  money.  Just  what  he  had 
scolded  and  ridiculed  everybody  else  for  doing. 
Well,  they  say  that  at  first  he  seemed  like  he 
would  go  crazy.  He  hadn't  anything  to  do.  He 
took  a  fancy  to  that  land-agent,  and  he  used  to 
go  and  set  in  his  office  and  ask  him  what  he  should 
do.  '  I  hain't  got  any  horses,  I  hain't  got  any  cows, 
I  hain't  got  any  pigs,  I  hain't  got  any  chickens.  I 
hain't  got  anything  to  do  from  sun  up  to  sundown.' 
The  fellow  said  the  tears  used  to  run  down  the  old 
fellow's  cheeks,  and  if  he  hadn't  been  so  busy  him- 
self he  believed  he  should  'a'  cried  too.  But  most 
o'  people  thought  old  Dryfoos  was  down  in  the 
mouth  because  he  hadn't  asked  more  for  his  farm, 
when  he  wanted  to  buy  it  back  and  found  they  held 
it  at  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand.  People  couldn't 
believe  he  was  just  homesick  and  heartsick  for  the 
old  place.  Well,  perhaps  he  was  sorry  he  hadn't 
asked  more  ;  that 's  human  nature  too. 

"  After  a  while  something  happened.  That  land- 
agent  used  to  tell  Dryfoos  to  get  out  to  Europe 
with  his  money  and  see  life  a  little,  or  go  and  live 
in  Washington,  where  he  could  be  somebody  ;  but 
Dryfoos  wouldn't,  and  he  kept  listening  to  the  talk 
there,  and  all  of  a  sudden  he  caught  on.  He  came 
into  that  fellow's  one  day  with  a  plan  for  cutting 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  113 

up  the  eighty  acres  he  'd  kept  into  town  lots ;  and 
he  'd  got  it  all  plotted  out  so  well,  and  had  so  many 
practical  ideas  about  it,  that  the  fellow  was  aston- 
ished. He  went  right  in  with  him,  as  far  as 
Dryfoos  would  let  him,  and  glad  of  the  chance ; 
and  they  were  working  the  thing  for  all  it  was 
worth  when  I  struck  Moffitt.  Old  Dryfoos  wanted 
me  to  go  out  and  see  the  Dryfoos  &  Hendry  Addi- 
tion— guess  he  thought  may  be  I  'd  write  it  up  ;  and 
he  drove  me  out  there  himself.  Well,  it  was  funny 
to  see  a  town  made  :  streets  driven  through ;  two 
rows  of  shade-trees,  hard  and  soft,  planted ;  cellars 
dug  and  houses  put  up — regular  Queen  Anne  style, 
too,  with  stained  glass — all  at  once.  Dryfoos  apolo- 
gised for  the  streets  because  they  were  hand-made ; 
said  they  expected  their  street-making  machine 
Tuesday,  and  then  they  intended  to  push  things." 

Fulkerson  enjoyed  the  effect  of  his  picture  on 
March  for  a  moment,  and  then  went  on  :  "  He  was 
mighty  intelligent,  too,  and  he  questioned  me  up 
about  my  business  as  sharp  as  I  ever  was  ques- 
tioned ;  seemed  to  kind  of  strike  his  fancy ;  I  guess 
he  wanted  to  find  out  if  there  was  any  money  in  it. 
He  was  making  money,  hand  over  hand,  then ;  and 
he  never  stopped  speculating  and  improving,  till 
he  'd  scraped  together  three  or  four  hundred 
thousand  dollars ;  they  said  a  million,  but  they  like 
round  numbers  at  Moffitt,  and  I  guess  half  a  million 
would  lay  over  it  comfortably  and  leave  a  few 
thousands  to  spare,  probably.  Then  he  came  on 
to  New  York." 


114        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

Fulkerson  struck  a  match  against  the  ribbed  side 
of  the  porcelain  cup  that  held  the  matches  in  the 
centre  of  the  table,  and  lit  a  cigarette,  which  he 
began  to  smoke,  throwing  his  head  back  with  a 
leisurely  effect,  as  if  he  had  got  to  the  end  of  at  least 
as  much  of  his  story  as  he  meant  to  tell  without 
prompting. 

March  asked  him  the  desired  question.  "What 
in  the  world  for  ? " 

Fulkerson  took  out  his  cigarette  and  said,  with  a 
smile  :  "  To  spend  his  money,  and  get  his  daughters 
into  the  old  Knickerbocker  society.  May  be  he 
thought  they  were  all  the  same  kind  of  Dutch." 

"  And  has  he  succeeded  ?  " 

"  Well,  they  're  not  social  leaders  yet.  But  it 's 
only  a  question  of  time — generation  or  two — espe- 
cially if  time's  money,  and  if  Every  Other  Week  is 
the  success  it's  bound  to  be." 

"  You  don't  mean  to  say,  Fulkerson,"  said  March, 
with  a  half  doubting,  half-daunted  laugh,  "that  he's 
your  Angel  ? " 

"  That 's  what  I  mean  to  say,"  returned  Fulkerson. 
<;  I  ran  onto  him  in  Broadway  one  day  last  summer. 
If  you  ever  saw  anybody  in  your  life,  you  're  sure  to 
meet  him  in  Broadway  again,  sooner  or  later.  That 's 
the  philosophy  of  the  bunco  business;  country 
people  from  the  same  neighbourhood  are  sure  to  run 
up  against  each  other  the  first  time  they  come  to 
New  York.  I  put  out  my  hand,  and  I  said,  '  Isn't 
this  Mr.  Dryfoos  from  Moffitt  ? '  He  didn't  seem  to 
have  any  use  for  my  hand  j  he  let  me  keep  it,  and 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       115 

he  squared  those  old  lips  of  his  till  his  imperial  stuck 
straight  out.  Ever  see  Bernhardt  in  L'fitrangere  1 
Well,  the  American  husband  is  old  Dryfoos  all  over  ; 
no  moustache,  and  hay-coloured  chin-whiskers  cut 
slanting  from  the  corners  of  his  mouth.  He  cocked 
his  little  gray  eyes  at  me,  and  says  he,  '  Yes,  young 
man.  My  name  is'  Dryfoos,  and  I  'm  from  Moffitt. 
But  I  don't  want  no  present  of  Longfellow's  Works, 
illustrated ;  and  I  don't  want  to  taste  no  fine  teas  ; 
but  I  know  a  policeman  that  does  ;  and  if  you  're 
the  son  of  my  old  friend  Squire  Strohfeldt,  you  'cl 
better  get  out.'  '  Well,  then,'  said  I,  '  how  would 
you  like  to  go  into  the  newspaper  syndicate  busi- 
ness 1 '  He  gave  another  look  at  me,  and  then  he 
burst  out  laughing,  and  he  grabbed  my  hand,  and 
he  just  froze  to  it.  I  never  saw  anybody  so  glad. 

"  Well,  the  long  and  the  short  of  it  was  that  I 
asked  him  round  here  to  Maroni's  to  dinner  ;  and 
before  we  broke  up  for  the  night  we  had  settled  the 
financial  side  of  the  plan  that's  brought  you  to  New 
York.  I  can  see,"  said  Fulkerson,  who  had  kept  his 
eyes  fast  on  March's  face,  "  that  you  don't  more  than 
half  like  the  idea  of  Dryfoos.  It  ought  to  give  you 
more  confidence  in  the  thing  than  you  ever  had. 
You  needn't  be  afraid,"  he  added,  with  some  feeling, 
"  that  I  talked  Dryfoos  into  the  thing  for  my  own 
advantage." 

"Oh,  my  dear  Fulkerson  !"  March  protested,  all 
the  more  fervently  because  he  was  really  a  little 
guilty. 

"  Well,  of  course  not !     I  didn't  mean  you  were. 


116       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

But  I  just  happened  to  tell  him  what  I  wanted  to 
go  into  when  I  could  see  my  way  to  it,  and  he  caught 
on  of  his  own  accord.  The  fact  is,"  said  Fulkerson, 
"  I  guess  I  'd  better  make  a  clean  breast  of  it,  now 
I  'm  at  it.  Dryfoos  wanted  to  get  something  for 
that  boy  of  his  to  do.  He's  in  railroads  himself, 
and  he's  in  mines  and  other  things,  and  he  keeps 
busy,  and  he  can't  bear  to  have  his  boy  hanging 
round  the  house  doing  nothing,  like  as  if  he  was  a 
girl.  I  told  him  that  the  great  object  of  a  rich  man 
was  to  get  his  son  into  just  that  fix,  but  he  couldn't 
seem  to  see  it,  and  the  boy  hated  it  himself.  He  's 
got  a  good  head,  and  he  wanted  to  study  for  the 
ministry  when  they  were  all  living  together  out  on 
the  farm  ;  but  his  father  had  the  old-fashioned  ideas 
about  that.  You  know  they  used  to  think  that  any 
sort  of  stuff  was  good  enough  to  make  a  preacher 
out  of ;  but  they  wanted  the  good  timber  for  busi- 
ness ;  and  so  the  old  man  wouldn't  let  him.  You  '11 
see  the  fellow  ;  you  '11  like  him  ;  he 's  no  fool,  I  can 
tell  you ;  and  he 's  going  to  be  our  publisher, 
nominally  at  first  and  actually  when  I  ;ve  taught 
him  the  ropes  a  little." 


XII. 

FULKERSON  stopped  and  looked  at  March,  whom 
he  saw  lapsing  into  a  serious  silence.  Doubtless  he 
divined  his  uneasiness  with  the  facts  that  had  been 
given  him  to  digest.  He  pulled  out  his  watch  and 
glanced  at  it.  "  See  here,  how  would  you  like  to  go 
up  to  Forty-sixth  Street  with  me,  and  drop  in  on 
old  Dryfoos  ?  Now 's  your  chance.  He  's  going 
West  to-morrow,  and  won't  be  back  for  a  month  or 
so.  They  '11  all  be  glad  to  see  you,  and  you  '11 
understand  things  better  when  you  've  seen  him  and 
his  family.  I  can't  explain." 

March  reflected  a  moment.  Then  he  said,  with  a 
wisdom  that  surprised  him,  for  he  would  have  liked 
to  yield  to  the  impulse  of  his  curiosity :  "  Perhaps 
we  'd  better  wait  till  Mrs.  March  comes  down,  and 
let  things  take  the  usual  course.  The  Dryfoos 
ladies  will  want  to  call  on  her  as  the  last-comer,  and 
if  I  treated  myself  en  garqon  now,  and  paid  the  first 
visit,  it  might  complicate  matters." 

"  Well,  perhaps  you  're  right,"  said  Fulkerson. 
"  I  don't  know  much  about  these  things,  and  I  don't 
believe  Ma  Dryfoos  does  either."  He  was  on  his 
legs  lighting  another  cigarette.  "I  suppose  the 


118       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

girls  are  getting  themselves  up  in  etiquette,  though. 
Well,  then,  let 's  have  a  look  at  the  Every  Other  Week 
building,  and  then,  if  you  like  your  quarters  there, 
you  can  go  round  and  close  for  Mrs.  Green's  flat." 

March's  dormant  allegiance  to  his  wife's  wishes 
had  been  roused  by  his  decision  in  favour  of  good 
social  usage.  "  I  don't  think  I  shall  take  the  flat/' 
he  said. 

"Well,  don't  reject  it  without  giving  it  another 
look,  anyway.  Come  on  ! " 

He  helped  March  on  with  his  light  overcoat,  and 
the  little  stir  they  made  for  their  departure  caught 
the  notice  of  the  old  German ;  he  looked  up  from 
his  beer  at  them.  March  was  more  than  ever 
impressed  with  something  familiar  in  his  face.  In 
compensation  for  his  prudence  in  regard  to  the 
Dryfooses  he  now  indulged  an  impulse.  He  stepped 
across  to  where  the  old  man  sat,  with  his  bald  head 
shining  like  ivory  under  the  gas-jet,  and  his  fine 
patriarchal  length  of  bearded  mask  taking  picturesque 
lights  and  shadows,  and  put  out  his  hand  to  him. 

"  Lindau  !     Isn't  this  Mr.  Lindau  ? " 

The  old  man  lifted  himself  slowly  to  his  feet  with 
mechanical  politeness,  and  cautiously  took  March's 
hand.  "  Yes,  my  name  is  Lindau,"  he  said  slowly, 
while  he  scanned  Mai'ch's  face.  Then  he  broke  into 
a  long  cry.  "  Ah-h-h-h-h,  my  dear  poy  !  my  yong 

friendt !  my — my Idt  is  Passil  Marge,  not  zo  ? 

Ah,  ha,  ha,  ha  !  How  gladt  I  am  to  zee  you  !  Why, 
I  am  gladt !  And  you  rememberdt  me  ?  You 
remember  Schiller,  and  Goethe,  and  Uhland  1  And 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        119 

Indianapolis  ?  You  still  lif  in  Indianapolis  1  It 
sheers  my  hardt  to  zee  you.  But  you  are  lidtle  oldt 
too  ?  Tventy-five  years  makes  a  difference.  Ah,  I 
am  gladt !  Dell  me,  idt  is  Passil  Marge,  not  zo  1 " 

He  looked  anxiously  into  March's  face,  with  a 
gentle  smile  of  mixed  hope  and  doubt,  and  March 
said  :  "  As  sure  as  it's  Berthold  Lindau,  and  I  guess 
it 's  you.  And  you  remember  the  old  times  1  You 
were  as  much  of  a  boy  as  I  was,  Lindau.  Are  you 
living  in  New  York  1  Do  you  recollect  how  you 
tried  to  teach  me  to  fence  1  I  don't  know  how 
to  this  day,  Lindau.  How  good  you  were,  and  how 
patient !  Do  you  remember  how  we  used  to  sit  up 
in  the  little  parlour  back  of  your  printing  office,  and 
read  Die  Eiluber  and  Die  Theilang  der  Erde  and  Die 
Glocfce  1  And  Mrs.  Lindau  1  Is  she  with — 

"Deadt — deadt  long  ago.  Eight  after  I  got 
home  from  the  war — tventy  years  ago.  But  tell 
me,  you  are  married  1  Children  1  Yes  !  Goodt ! 
And  how  oldt  are  you  now  1 " 

"  It  makes  me  seventeen  to  see  you,  Lindau,  but 
I  Ve  got  a  son  nearly  as  old." 

"Ah,  ha,  ha!  Goodt!  And  where  do  you 
lif  ? " 

"Well,  I'm  just  coming  to  live  in  New  York," 
March  said,  looking  over  at  Fulkerson,  who  had 
been  watching  his  interview  with  the  perfunctory 
smile  of  sympathy  that  people  put  on  at  the  meet- 
ing of  old  friends.  "  I  want  to  introduce  you  to  my 
friend  Mr.  Fulkerson.  He  and  I  are  going  into  a 
literary  enterprise  here." 


120       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Ah  !  zo  ? "  said  the  old  man,  with  polite  interest. 
He  took  Fulkerson's  proffered  hand,  and  they  all 
stood  talking  a  few  moments  together. 

Then  Fulkerson  said,  with  another  look  at  his 
watch,  "  Well,  March,  we  're  keeping  Mr.  Lindau 
from  his  dinner." 

"  Dinner  ! "  cried  the  old  man.  "  Idt  's  better 
than  breadt  and  meadt  to  see  Mr.  Marge  ! " 

"  I  must  be  going,  anyway,"  said  March.  "  But  I 
must  see  you  again  soon,  Lindau.  Where  do  you 
live  ?  I  want  a  long  talk." 

"And  I.  You  will  find  me  here  at  dinner-time," 
said  the  old  man.  "  It  is  the  best  place  ;"  and  March 
fancied  him  reluctant  to  give  another  address. 

To  cover  his  consciousness  he  answered  gaily, 
"  Then,  it 's  (mf  wiedersehen  with  us.  Well ! " 

"Also  !  "  The  old  man  took  his  hand,  and  made 
a  mechanical  movement  with  his  mutilated  arm,  as 
if  he  would  have  taken  it  in  a  double  clasp.  He 
laughed  at  himself.  "I  w anted  to  gif  you  the 
other  handt  too,  but  I  gafe  it  to  your  gountry  a 
goodt  while  ago." 

"  To  my  country  ? "  asked  March,  with  a  sense  of 
pain,  and  yet  lightly,  as  if  it  were  a  joke  of  the  old 
man's.  "  Your  country  too,  Lindau  ] " 

The  old  man  turned  very  grave,  and  said,  almost 
coldly,  "  What  gountry  hass  a  poor  man  got,  Mr. 
Marge  ? " 

"  Well,  you  ought  to  have  a  share  in  the  one  you 
helped  to  save  for  us  rich  men,  Lindau,"  March  re- 
turned, still  humouring  the  joke. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  121 

The  old  man  smiled  sadly,  but  made  no  answer  as 
he  sat-  down  again. 

"  Seems  to  be  a  little  soured,"  said  Fulkerson,  as 
they  went  down  the  steps.  He  was  one  of  those 
Americans  whose  habitual  conception  of  life  is 
unalloyed  prosperity.  When  any  experience  or 
observation  of  his  went  counter  to  it  he  suffered 
something  like  physical  pain.  He  eagerly  shrugged 
away  the  impression  left  upon  his  buoyancy  by 
Lindau,  and  added  to  March's  continued  silence, 
"  What  did  I  tell  you  about  meeting  every  man  in 
New  York  that  you  ever  knew  before  1 " 

"  I  never  expected  to  meet  Lindau  in  the  world 
again,"  said  March,  more  to  himself  than  to  Fulker- 
son. "  I  had  an  impression  that  he  had  been  killed 
in  the  war.  I  almost  wish  he  had  been." 

"  Oh,  hello,  now  ! "  cried  Fulkerson. 

March  laughed,  but  went  on  soberly.  "  He  was  a 
man  predestined  to  adversity,  though.  When  I 
first  knew  him  out  in  Indianapolis  he  was  starving 
along  with  a  sick  wife  and  a  sick  newspaper.  It 
was  before  the  Germans  had  come  over  to  the 
Eepublicans  generally,  but  Lindau  was  fighting  the 
anti-slavery  battle  just  as  naturally  at  Indianapolis 
in  1858  as  he  fought  behind  the  barricades  at  Berlin 
in  1848.  And  yet  he  was  always  such  a  gentle  soul ! 
And  so  generous !  He  taught  me  German  for  the 
love  of  it ;  he  wouldn't  spoil  his  pleasure  by  taking 
a  cent  from  me ;  he  -seemed  to  get  enough  out  of 
my  being  young  and  enthusiastic,  and  out  of 
prophesying  great  things  for  me.  I  wonder  what 
VOL.  I.— 6 


122        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

the  poor  old  fellow  is  doing  here,  with  that  one 
hand  of  his  ?  " 

"Not  amassing  a  very  handsome  pittance,  I 
should  say,"  said  Fulkerson,  getting  back  some  of 
his  lightness.  "  There  are  lots  of  two-handed  fellows 
in  New  York  that  are  not  doing  much  better,  I 
guess.  May  be  he  gets  some  writing  on  the  German 
papers." 

"I  hope  so.  He's  one  of  the  most  accomplished 
men  !  He  used  to  be  a  splendid  musician — pianist 
— and  knows  eight  or  ten  languages." 

"Well,  it's  astonishing,"  said  Fulkerson,  "how 
much  lumber  those  Germans  can  carry  around  in 
their  heads  all  their  lives,  and  never  work  it  up  into 
anything.  It 's  a  pity  they  couldn't  do  the  acquiring, 
and  let  out  the  use  of  their  learning  to  a  few  bright 
Americans.  We  could  make  things  hum,  if  we  could 
arrange  'em  that  way." 

He  talked  on,  unheeded  by  March,  who  went 
along  half-consciously  tormented  by  his  lightness  in 
the  pensive  memories  the  meeting  with  Lindau  had 
called  up.  Was  this  all  that  sweet,  unselfish  nature 
could  come  to  ?  What  a  homeless  old  age  at  that 
meagre  Italian  table  d'hote,  with  that  tall  glass  of 
beer  for  a  half-hour's  oblivion  !  That  shabby  dress, 
that  pathetic  mutilation  !  He  must  have  a  pension, 
twelve  dollars  a  month,  or  eighteen,  from  a  grateful 
country.  But  what  else  did  he  eke  out  with  1 

"Well,  here  we  are,"  said .  Fulkerson  cheerily. 
He  ran  up  the  steps  before  March,  and  opened  the 
carpenter's  temporary  valve  in  the  door  frame,  and 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  123 

led  the  way  into  a  darkness  smelling  sweetly  of 
unpainted  wood- work  and  newly  dried  plaster  ;  their 
feet  slipped  on  shavings  and  grated  on  sand.  He 
scratched  a  match,  and  found  a  candle,  and  then 
walked  about  up  and  down  stairs,  and  lectured  on 
the  advantages  of  the  place.  He  had  fitted  up 
bachelor  apartments  for  himself  in  the  house,  and 
said  that  he  was  going  to  have  a  flat  to  let  on  the 
top  floor.  "  I  didn't  offer  it  to  you  because  I  supposed 
you  'd  be  too  proud  to  live  over  your  shop  ;  and  it 's 
too  small,  anyway ;  only  five  rooms." 

"  Yes,  that 's  too  small,"  said  March,  shirking  the 
other  point. 

"Well,  then,  here's  the  room  I  intend  for  your 
office,"  said  Fulkerson,  showing  him  into  a  large  back 
parlour  one  flight  up.  "  You  '11  have  it  quiet  from 
the  street  noises  here,  and  you  can  be  at  home  or 
not  as  you  please.  There  '11  be  a  boy  on  the  stairs 
to  find  out.  Now,  you  see,  this  makes  the  Grosvenor 
Green  flat  practicable,  if  you  want  it." 

March  felt  the  forces  of  fate  closing  about  him 
and  pushing  him  to  a  decision.  He  feebly  fought 
them  off  till  he  could  have  another  look  at  the  flat. 
Then,  baffled  and  subdued  still  more  by  the  unex- 
pected presence  of  Mrs.  Grosvenor  Green  herself, 
who  was  occupying  it  so  as  to  be  able  to  show  it 
effectively,  he  took  it.  He  was  aware  more  than 
ever  of  its  absurdities ;  he  knew  that  his  wife  would 
never  cease  to  hate  it ;  but  he  had  suffered  one  of 
those  eclipses  of  the  imagination  to  Avhich  men  of 
his  temperament  are  subject,  and  in  which  he  could 


124  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

see  no  future  for  his  desires.  He  felt  a  comfort  in 
irretrievably  committing  himself,  and  exchanging  the 
burden  of  indecision  for  the  burden  of  responsibility. 

"  I  didn't  know,"  said  Fulkerson,  as  they  walked 
back  to  his  hotel  together,  "  but  you  might  fix  it  up 
with  that  lone  widow  and  her  pretty  daughter  to 
take  part  of  their  house  here."  He  seemed  to  be 
reminded  of  it  by  the  fact  of  passing  the  house,  and 
March  looked  up  at  its  dark  front.  He  could  not 
have  told  exactly  why  he  felt  a  pang  of  remorse  at 
the  sight,  and  doubtless  it  was  more  regret  for 
having  taken  the  Grosvenor  Green  flat  than  for  not 
having  taken  the  widow's  rooms.  Still  he  could  not 
forget  her  wistfulness  when  his  wife  and  he  were 
looking  at  them,  and  her  disappointment  when  they 
decided  against  them.  He  had  toyed,  in  his  after- 
talk  to  Mrs.  March,  with  a  sort  of  hypothetical 
obligation  they  had  to  modify  their  plans  so  as  to 
meet  the  widow's  want  of  just  such  a  family  as 
theirs ;  they  had  both  said  what  a  blessing  it  would 
be  to  her,  and  what  a  pity  they  could  not  do  it ; 
but  they  had  decided  very  distinctly  that  they 
could  not.  Now  it  seemed  to  him  that  they  might  ; 
and  he  asked  himself  whether  he  had  not  actually 
departed  as  much  from  their  ideal  as  if  he  had  taken 
board  with  the  widow.  Suddenly  it  seemed  to  him 
that  his  wife  asked  him  this  too. 

"I  reckon,"  said  Fulkerson,  "  that  she  could  have 
arranged  to  give  you  your  meals  in  your  rooms,  and 
it  would  have  come  to  about  the  same  thing  as 
house-keeping." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  125 

"  No  sort  of  boarding  can  be  the  same  as  house- 
keeping," said  March.  "I  want  my  little  girl  to 
have  the  run  of  a  kitchen,  and  I  want  the  whole 
family  to  have  the  moral  effect  of  house-keeping. 
It's  demoralising  to  board,  in  every  way;  it  isn't 
a  home,  if  anybody  else  takes  the  care  of  it  off  your 
hands." 

"  Well,  I  suppose  so,"  Fulkerson  assented ;  but 
March's  words  had  a  hollow  ring  to  himself,  and  in 
his  own  mind  he  began  to  retaliate  his  dissatisfac- 
tion upon  Fulkerson. 

He  parted  from  him  on  the  usual  terms  out- 
wardly, but  he  felt  obscurely  abused  by  Fulkerson 
in  regard  to  the  Dryfooses,  father  and  son.  He  did 
not  know  but  Fulkerson  had  taken  an  advantage  of 
him  in  allowing  him  to  commit  himself  to  their  en- 
terprise without  fully  and  frankly  telling  him  who 
and  what  his  backer  was ;  he  perceived  that  with 
young  Dryfoos  as  the  publisher  and  Fulkerson  as 
the  general  director  of  the  paper  there  might  be 
very  little  play  for  his  own  ideas  of  its  conduct. 
Perhaps  it  was  the  hurt  to  his  vanity  involved  by 
the  recognition  of  this  fact  that  made  him  forget  how 
little  choice  he  really  had  in  the  matter,  and  how, 
since  he  had  not  accepted  the  offer  to  edit  the  in- 
surance paper,  nothing  remained  for  him  but  to 
close  with  Fulkerson.  In  this  moment  of  suspicion 
and  resentment  he  accused  Fulkerson  of  hastening 
his  decision  in  regard  to  the  Grosvenor  Green  apart- 
ment ;  he  now  refused  to  consider  it  a  decision,  and 
said  to  himself  that  if  he  felt  disposed  to  do  so  he 


126       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

would  send  Mrs.  Green  a  note  reversing  it  in  the 
morning.  But  he  put  it  all  off  till  morning  with  his 
clothes,  when  he  went  to  bed  ;  he  put  off  even  think- 
ing what  his  wife  would  say ;  he  cast  Fulkerson  and 
his  constructive  treachery  out  of  his  mind  too,  and 
invited  into  it  some  pensive  reveries  of  the  past, 
when  he  still  stood  at  the  parting  of  the  ways,  and 
could  take  this  path  or  that.  In  his  middle  life  this 
was  not  possible ;  he  must  follow  the  path  chosen 
long  ago,  wherever  it  led.  He  was  not  master  of 
himself,  as  he  once  seemed,  but  the  servant  of  those 
he  loved ;  if  he  could  do  what  he  liked,  perhaps 
he  might  renounce  this  whole  New  York  enterprise, 
and  go  off  somewhere  out  of  the  reach  of  care ;  but 
he  could  not  do  what  he  liked,  that  was  very  clear. 
In  the  pathos  of  this  conviction  he  dwelt  compassion- 
ately upon  the  thought  of  poor  old  Liudau ;  he 
resolved  to  make  him  accept  a  handsome  sum  of 
money — more  than  he  could  spare,  something  that 
he  would  feel  the  loss  of — in  payment  of  the  lessons 
in  German  and  fencing  given  so  long  ago.  At  the 
usual  rate  for  such  lessons,  his  debt,  with  interest 
for  twenty  odd  years,  would  run  very  far  into  the 
hundreds.  Too  far,  he  perceived,  for  his  wife's 
joyous  approval ;  he  determined  not  to  add  the 
interest ;  or  he  believed  that  Lindau  would  refuse 
the  interest ;  he  put  a  fine  speech  in  his  mouth, 
making  him  do  so ;  and  after  that  he  got  Lindau 
employment  on  Every  Other  Week,  and  took  care  of 
him  till  he  died. 

Through  all  his  melancholy  and  munificence  he 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       127 

was  aware  of  sordid  anxieties  for  having  taken  the 
Grosvenor  Green  apartment.  These  began  to  as- 
sume visible,  tangible  shapes  as  he  drowsed,  and  to 
become  personal  entities,  from  which  he  woke,  with 
little  starts,  to  a  realisation  of  their  true  nature,  and 
then  suddenly  fell  fast  asleep. 

In  the  accomplishment  of  the  events  which  his 
reverie  played  with,  there  was  much  that  retroac- 
tively stamped  it  with  prophecy,  but  much  also 
that  was  better  than  he  forboded.  He  found  that 
with  regard  to  the  Grosvenor  Green  apartment  he 
had  not  allowed  for  his  wife's  willingness  to  get  any 
sort  of  roof  over  her  head  again  after  the  removal 
from  their  old  home,  or  for  the  alleviations  that 
grow  up  through  mere  custom.  The  practical  work- 
ings of  the  apartment  were  not  so  bad ;  it  had  its 
good  points,  and  after  the  first  sensation  of  oppres- 
sion in  it  they  began  to  feel  the  convenience  of  its 
arrangement.  They  were  at  that  time  of  life  when 
people  first  turn  to  their  children's  opinion  with 
deference,  and,  in  the  loss  of  keenness  in  their  own 
likes  and  dislikes,  consult  the  young  preferences 
which  are  still  so  sensitive.  It  went  far  to  reconcile 
Mrs.  March  to  the  apartment  that  her  children  were 
pleased  with  its  novelty ;  when  this  wore  off  for 
them,  she  had  herself  begun  to  find  it  much  more 
easily  manageable  than  a  house.  After  she  had  put 
away  several  barrels  of  gimcracks,  and  folded  up 
screens  and  rugs  and  skins,  and  carried  them  all  off  to 
the  little  dark  store-room  which  the  flat  developed, 
she  perceived  at  once  a  roominess  and  coziness  in  it 


128        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

unsuspected  before.  Then,  when  people  began  to 
call,  she  had  a  pleasure,  a  superiority,  in  saying  that 
it  was  a  furnished  apartment,  and  in  disclaiming  all 
responsibility  for  the  upholstery  and  decoration.  If 
March  was  by,  she  always  explained  that  it  was 
Mr.  March's  fancy,  and  amiably  laughed  it  off  with 
her  callers  as  a  mannish  eccentricity.  Nobody  really 
seemed  to  think  it  otherwise  than  pretty ;  and  this 
again  was  a  triumph  for  Mrs.  March,  because  it 
showed  how  inferior  the  New  York  taste  was  to  the 
Boston  taste  in  such  matters. 

March  submitted  silently  to  his  punishment,  and 
laughed  with  her  before  company  at  his  own  eccen- 
tricity. She  had  been  so  preoccupied  with  the 
adjustment  of  the  family  to  its  new  quarters  and 
circumstances  that  the  time  passed  for  laying  his 
misgivings,  if  they  were  misgivings,  about  Fulkerson 
before  her,  and  when  an  occasion  came  for  express- 
ing them  they  had  themselves  passed  in  the  anxieties 
of  getting  forward  the  first  number  of  Every  Other 
Week.  He  kept  these  from  her  too,  and  the  biisiness 
that  brought  them  to  New  York  had  apparently 
dropped  into  abeyance  before  the  questions  of 
domestic  economy  that  presented  and  absented 
themselves.  March  knew  his  wife  to  be  a  woman 
of  good  mind  and  in  perfect  sympathy  with  him, 
"but  he  understood  the  limitations  of  her  perspective  ; 
and  if  he  was  not  too  wise,  he  was  too  experienced 
to  intrude  upon  it  any  affairs  of  his  till  her  own 
were  reduced  to  the  right  order  and  proportion.  It 
would  have  been  folly  to  talk  to  her  of  Fulkerson's 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  129 

% 

conjecturable  uncandour  while  she  was  in  doubt 
whether  her  cook  would  like  the  kitchen,  or  her  two 
servants  would  consent  to  room  together ;  and  till  it 
was  decided  what  school  Tom  should  go  to,  and 
whether  Bella  should  have  lessons  at  home  or  not, 
the  relation  which  March  was  to  bear  to  the  Dry- 
fooses,  as  owner  and  publisher,  was  not  to  be  dis- 
cussed with  his  wife.  He  might  drag  it  in,  but  he 
was  aware  that  with  her  mind  distracted  by  more 
immediate  interests  he  could  not  get  from  her  that 
judgment,  that  reasoned  divination,  which  he  relied 
upon  so  much.  She  would  try,  she  would  do  her 
best,  but  the  result  would  be  a  view  clouded  and 
discoloured  by  the  effort  she  must  make. 

He  put  the  whole  matter  by,  and  gave  himself  to 
the  details  of  the  work  before  him.  In  this  he  found 
not  only  escape,  but  reassurance,  for  it  became  more 
and  more  apparent  that  whatever  was  nominally  the 
structure  of  the  business,  a  man  of  his  qualifications 
and  his  instincts  could  not  have  an  insignificant 
place  in  it.  He  had  also  the  consolation  of  liking 
his  work,  and  of  getting  an  instant  grasp  of  it  that 
grew  constantly  firmer  and  closer.  The  joy  of 
knowing  that  he  had  not  made  a  mistake  was  great. 
In  giving  rein  to  ambitions  long  forborne  he  seemed 
to  get  back  to  the  youth  when  he  had  indulged  them 
first ;  and  after  half  a  lifetime  passed  in  pursuits 
alien  to  his  nature,  he  was  feeling  the  serene  happi- 
ness of  being  mated  through  his  work  to  his  early 
love.  From  the  outside  the  spectacle  might  have 
had  its  pathos,  and  it  is  not  easy  to  justify  such  an 
6* 


130  A  HAZARD  OF  XFAV  FORTUNES. 

• 

experiment  as  he  had  made  at  his  time  of  life,  except 
upon  the  ground  where  he  rested  from  its  con- 
sideration— the  ground  of  necessity. 

His  work  was  more  in  his  thoughts  than  himself, 
however,  and  as  the  time  for  the  publication  of  the 
first  number  of  his  periodical  came  nearer,  his  cares 
all  centred  upon  it.  Without  fixing  any  date, 
Fulkerson  had  announced  it,  and  pushed  his 
announcements  with  the  shameless  vigour  of  a  born 
advertiser.  He  worked  his  interest  with  the  press 
to  the  utmost,  and  paragraphs  of  a  variety  that  did 
•credit  to  his  ingenuity  were  afloat  everywhere. 
Some  of  them  were  speciously  unfavourable  in  tone ; 
they  criticised  and  even  ridiculed  the  principles  on 
-which  the  new  departure  in  literary  journalism  was 
based.  Others  defended  it ;  others  yet  denied  that 
this  rumoured  principle  was  really  the  principle. 
All  contributed  to  make  talk.  All  proceeded  from 
the  same  fertile  invention. 

March  observed  with  a  degree  of  mortification 
that  the  talk  was  very  little  of  it  in  the  New  York 
pres  ;  there  the  references  to  the  novel  enterprise 
were  slight  and  cold.  But  Fulkerson  said  :  "  Don't 
mind  that,  old  man.  It's  the  whole  country  that 
makes  or  breaks  a  thing  like  this  ;  Xew  York  has 
very  little  to  do  with  it.  Now  if  it  were  a  play, 
it  would  be  different.  New  York  does  make  or 
break  a  play  ;  but  it  doesn't  make  or  break  a  book  ; 
it  doesn't  make  or  break  a  magazine.  The  great 
mass  of  the  readers  are  outside  of  New  York,  and 
the  rural  districts  are  what  we  have  got  to  go  for. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        131 

They  don't  read  much  in  New  York  ;  they  write, 
and  talk  about  what  they  Ve  written.  Don't  you 
worry." 

The  rumour  of  Fulkerson's  connection  with  the 
enterprise  accompanied  many  of  the  paragraphs,  and 
he  was  able  to  stay  March's  thirst  for  employment 
by  turning  over  to  him  from  day  to  day  heaps  of 
the  manuscripts  which  began  to  pour  in  from  his 
old  syndicate  writers,  as  well  as  from  adventurous 
volunteers  all  over  the  country.  With  these  in 
hand  March  began  practically  to  plan  the  first 
number,  and  to  concrete  a  general  scheme  from  the 
material  and  the  experience  they  furnished.  They 
had  intended  to  issue  the  first  number  with  the  new 
year,  and  if  it  had  been  an  affair  of  literature  alone, 
it  would  have  been  very  easy  ;  but  it  was  the  art 
leg  they  limped  on,  as  Fulkerson  phrased  it.  They 
had  not  merely  to  deal  with  the  question  of  specific 
illustrations  for  this  article  or  that,  but  to  decide  the 
whole  character  of  their  illustrations,  and  first  of  all 
to  get  a  design  for  a  cover  which  should  both 
ensnare  the  heedless  and  captivate  the  fastidious. 
These  things  did  not  come  properly  within  March's 
province — that  had  been  clearly  understood — and 
for  a  while  Fulkerson  tried  to  run  the  art  leg  him- 
self. The  phrase  was  again  his,  but  it  was  simpler 
to  make  the  phrase  than  to  run  the  leg.  The  diffi- 
cult generation,  at  once  stiff- backed  and  slippery, 
with  Avhich  he  had  to  do  in  this  endeavour,  reduced 
even  so  buoyant  an  optimist  to  despair,  and  after 
wasting  some  valuable  weeks  in  trying  to  work  the 
K 


132  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

artists  himself,  he  determined  to  get  an  artist  to 
work  them.  But  what  artist  ?  It  could  not  be  a 
man  with  fixed  reputation  and  a  following :  he 
would  be  too  costly,  and  would  have  too  many 
enemies  among  his  brethren,  even  if  he  would  con- 
sent to  undertake  the  job.  Fulkerson  had  a  man  in 
mind,  an  artist  too,  who  would  have  been  the  very 
thing  if  he  had  been  the  thing  at  all.  He  had 
talent  enough,  and  his  sort  of  talent  would  reach 
round  the  whole  situation,  but,  as  Fulkerson  said, 
he  was  as  many  kinds  of  an  ass  as  he  was  kinds  of 
an  artist 


PART  SECOND. 
I. 

THE  evening  when  March  closed  with  Mrs.  Green's 
reduced  offer,  and  decided  to  take  her  apartment, 
the  widow  whose  lodgings  he  had  rejected  sat  with 
her  daughter  in  an  upper  room  at  the  back  of  her 
house.  In  the  shaded  glow  of  the  drop-light  she 
was  sewing,  and  the  girl  was  drawing  at  the  same 
table.  From  time  to  time,  as  they  talked,  the  girl 
lifted  her  head  and  tilted  it  a  little  on  one  side  so  as 
to  get  some  desired  effect  of  her  work. 

"It's  a  mercy  the  cold  weather  holds  off,"  said 
the  mother.  "  We  should  have  to  light  the  furnace, 
unless  we  wanted  to  scare  everybody  away  with  a 
cold  house  ;  and  I  don't  know  who  would  take  care 
of  it,  or  what  would  become  of  us,  every  way." 

"  They  seem  to  have  been  scared  away  from  a 
house  that  wasn't  cold,"  said  the  girl.  "  Perhaps 
they  might  like  a  cold  one.  But  it 's  too  early  for 
cold  yet.  It's  only  just  in  the  beginning  of  No- 
vember." 

"  The  Messenger  says  they  've  had  a  sprinkling  of 
snow." 


134       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Oh  yes,  at  St.  Barnaby  !  I  don't  know  when 
they  don't  have  sprinklings  of  snow  there.  I'm 
awfully  glad  we  haven't  got  that  winter  before  us." 

The  widow  sighed  as  mothers  do  who  feel  the 
contrast  their  experience  opposes  to  the  hopeful 
recklessness  of  such  talk  as  this.  "  We  may  have  a 
worse  winter  here,"  she  said  darkly. 

"  Then  I  couldn't  stand  it,"  said  the  girl,  "  and  I 
should  go  in  for  lighting  out  to  Florida  double- 
quick." 

"  And  how  would  you  get  to  Florida  1 "  demanded 
her  mother  severely. 

"  Oh,  by  the  usual  conveyance — Pullman  vesti- 
buled  train,  I  suppose.  What  makes  you  so  blue, 
mamma  1 "  The  girl  was  all  the  time  sketching  away, 
rubbing  out,  lifting  her  head  for  the  effect,  and  then 
bending  it  over  her  work  again  without  looking  at 
her  mother. 

"  I  am  not  blue,  Alma.  But  I  cannot  endure  this 
— this  hopefulness  of  yours." 

"  Why  ?     What  harm  does  it  do  1 " 

"  Harm  ? "  echoed  the  mother. 

Pending  the  effort  she  must  make  in  saying,  the 
girl  cut  in  :  "  Yes,  harm.  You  Ve  kept  your  despair 
dusted  off  and  ready  for  use  at  an  instant's  notice 
ever  since  we  came,  and  what  good  has  it  done  1 
I'm  going  to  keep  on  hoping  to  the  bitter  end. 
That 's  what  papa  did." 

It  was  what  the  Rev.  Archibald  Leighton  had 
done  with  all  the  consumptive's  buoyancy.  The 
morning  he  died  he  told  them  that  now  he  had 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       135 

turned  the  point  and  was  really  going  to  get  well. 
The  cheerfulness  was  not  only  in  his  disease,  but 
in  his  temperament.  Its  excess  was  always  a  little 
against  him  in  his  church-work,  and  Mrs.  Leighton. 
was  right  enough  in  feeling  that  if  it  had  not  been 
for  the  ballast  of  her  instinctive  despondency  he 
would  have  made  shipwreck  of  such  small  chances 
of  prosperity  as  befell  him  in  life.  It  was  not  from 
him  that  his  daughter  got  her  talent,  though  he  had 
left  her  his  temperament  intact  of  his  widow's  legal 
thirds.  He  was  one  of  those  men  of  whom  the 
country  people  say  when  he  is  gone  that  the  woman 
gets  along  better  without  him.  Mrs.  Leigliton  had 
long  eked  out  their  income  by  taking  a  summer 
boarder  or  two,  as  a  great  favour,  into  her  family ; 
and  when  the  greater  need  came,  she  frankly  gave 
up  her  house  to  the  summer-folks  (as  they  call  them 
in  the  country),  and  managed  it  for  their  comfort 
from  the  small  quarter  of  it  in  which  she  shut  her- 
self up  with  her  daughter. 

The  notion  of  shutting  up  is  an  exigency  of  the 
rounded  period.  The  fact  is,  of  course,  that  Alma 
Leigliton  was  not  shut  up  in  any  sense  Avhatever. 
She  was  the  pervading  light,  if  not  force,  of  the 
house.  She  Avas  a  good  cook,  and  she  managed  the 
kitchen  with  the  help  of  an  Irish  girl,  while  her 
mother  looked  after  the  rest  of  the  house-keeping. 
But  she  was  not  systematic ;  she  had  inspiration  but 
not  discipline,  and  her  mother  mourned  more  over 
the  days  when  Alma  left  the  whole  dinner  to  the 
Irish  girl  than  she  rejoiced  in  those  when  one  of 


136        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

Alma's  great  thoughts  took  form  in  a  chicken-pie  of 
incomparable  savour  or  in  a  matchless  pudding.  The 
off-days  came  when  her  artistic  nature  was  express- 
ing itself  in  charcoal,  for  she  drew  to  the  admiration 
of  all  among  the  lady  boarders  who  could  not  draw. 
The  others  had  their  reserves ;  they  readily  conceded 
that  Alma  had  genius,  but  they  were  sure  she  needed 
instruction.  On  the  other  hand,  they  were  not  so 
radical  as  to  agree  with  the  old  painter  who  came 
every  summer  to  paint  the  elms  of  the  St.  Barnaby 
meadows.  He  contended  that  she  needed  to  be  a 
man  in  order  to  amount  to  anything;  but  in  this 
theory  he  was  opposed  by  an  authority  of  his  own 
sex,  whom  the  lady  sketchers  believed  to  speak  with 
more  impartiality  in  a  matter  concerning  them  as 
much  as  Alma  Leighton.  He  said  that  instruction 
would  do,  and  he  was  not  only  younger  and 
handsomer,  but  he  was  fresher  from  the  schools 
than  old  Harrington,  who,  even  the  lady  sketchers 
could  see,  painted  in  an  obsolescent  manner.  His 
name  was  Beaton — Angus  Beaton ;  but  he  was  not 
Scotch,  or  not  more  Scotch  than  Mary  Queen  of 
Scots  was.  His  father  was  a  Scotchman,  but  Beaton 
was  born  in  Syracuse,  New  York,  and  it  had  taken 
only  three  years  in  Paris  to  obliterate  many  traces 
of  native  and  ancestral  manner  in  him.  He  wore 
his  black  beard  cut  shorter  than  his  moustache,  and 
a  little  pointed ;  he  stood  with  his  shoulders  well 
thrown  back  and  with  a  lateral  curve  of  his  person 
when  he  talked  about  art,  which  would  alone  have 
carried  conviction  even  if  he  had  not  had  a  thick, 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  137 

dark  bang  coming  almost  to  the  brows  of  his  mobile 
grey  eyes,  and  had  not  spoken  English  with  quick, 
staccato  impulses,  so  as  to  give  it  the  effect  of 
epigrammatic  and  sententious  French.  One  of  the 
ladies  said  that  you  always  thought  of  him  as 
having  spoken  French  after  it  was  over,  and  accused 
herself  of  wrong  in  not  being  able  to  feel  afraid  of 
him.  None  of  the  ladies  were  afraid  of  him,  though 
they  could  not  believe  that  he  was  really  so  de- 
ferential to  their  work  as  he  seemed ;  and  they 
knew,  when  he  would  not  criticise  Mr.  Harrington's 
work,  that  he  was  just  acting  from  principle. 

They  may  or  may  not  have  known  the  difference 
with  which  he  treated  Alma's  work  ;  but  the  girl 
herself  felt  that  his  abrupt,  impersonal  comment 
recognised  her  as  a  real  sister  in  art.  He  told  her 
she  ought  to  come  to  New  York,  and  draw  in  the 
League,  or  get  into  some  painter's  private  class  ;  and 
it  was  the  sense  of  duty  thus  appealed  to  which 
finally  resulted  in  the  hazardous  experiment  she  and 
her  mother  were  now  making.  There  were  no 
logical  breaks  in  the  chain  of  their  reasoning  from 
past  success  with  boarders  in  St.  Barnaby  to  future 
success  with  boarders  in  New  York.  Of  course  the 
outlay  was  much  greater.  The  rent  of  the  furnished 
house  they  had  taken  was  such  that  if  they  failed 
their  experiment  would  be  little  less  than  ruinous. 

But  they  were  not  going  to  fail ;  that  was  what 
Alma  contended,  with  a  hardy  courage  that  her 
mother  sometimes  felt  almost  invited  failure,  if  it 
did  not  deserve  it.  She  was  one  of  those  people 


138  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

who  believe  that  if  you  dread  harm  enough  it  is  less 
likely  to  happen.  She  acted  on  this  superstition  as 
if  it  were  a  religion. 

"  If  it  had  not  been  for  my  despair,  as  you  call  it, 
Alma,"  she  answered,  "  I  don't  know  where  we 
should  have  been  now." 

"  I  suppose  we  should  have  been  in  St  Barnaby," 
said  the  girl.  "  And  if  it 's  worse  to  be  in  Xew 
York,  you  see  what  your  despair's  done,  mamma. 
But  what 's  the  use  1  You  meant  well,  and  I  don't 
blame  you.  You  can't  expect  even  despair  to  come 
out  always  just  the  way  you  want  it.  Perhaps 
you  've  used  too  much  of  it."  The  girl  laughed,  and 
Mrs.  Leighton  laughed  too.  Like  every  one  else, 
she  was  not  merely  a  prevailing  mood,  as  people  are 
apt  to  be  in  books,  but  was  an  irregularly  spheroidal 
character,  with  surfaces  that  caught  the  different 
lights  of  circumstance  and  reflected  them.  Alma 
got  up  and  took  a  pose  before  the  mirror,  which  she 
then  transferred  to  her  sketch.  The  room  was 
pinned  about  with  other  sketches,  which  showed 
with  fantastic  indistinctness  in  the  shaded  gas-light. 
Alma  held  up  the  drawing.  "  How  do  you  like  it  1 '' 

Mrs.  Leighton  bent  forward  over  her  sewing  to 
look  at  it.  "You've  got  the  man's  face  rather 
weak." 

"Yes,  that's  so.  Either  I  see  all  the  hidden 
weakness  that 's  in  men's  natures,  and  bring  it  to 
the  surface  in  their  figures,  or  else  I  put  my  own 
weakness  into  them.  And  anyway,  it's  a  draw- 
back to  their  presenting  a  truly  manly  appearance. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  139 

As  long  as  I  have  one  of  the  miserable  objects 
before  me,  I  can  draw  him ;  but  as  soon  as  his 
back 's  turned  I  get  to  putting  ladies  into  men's 
clothes.  I  should  think  you  'd  be  scandalised, 
mamma,  if.  you  were  a  really  feminine  person.  It 
must  be  your  despair  that  helps  you  to  bear  up. 
But  what 's  the  matter  with  the  young  lady  in 
young  lady's  clothes  1  Any  dust  on  her  1 " 

"  What  expressions  ! "  said  Mrs.  Leighton. 
"  Really,  Alma,  for  a  refined  girl  you  are  the  most 
unrefined  ! " 

"  Go  on — about  the  girl  in  the  picture  ! "  said 
Alma,  slightly  knocking  her  mother  on  the  shoulder, 
as  she  stood  over  her. 

"  I  don't  see  anything  to  her.    What 's  she  doing  1" 

"  Oh,  just  being  made  love  to,  I  suppose." 

"  She 's  perfectly  insipid  ! " 

"  You  're  awfully  articulate,  mamma !  Now,  if 
Mr.  Wetmore  was  to  criticise  that  picture  he'd 
draw  a  circle  round  it  in  the  air,  and  look  at  it 
through  that,  and  tilt  his  head  first  on  one  side  and 
then  on  the  other,  and  then  look  at  you,  as  if  you 
were  a  figure  in  it,  and  then  collapse  a  while,  and 
moan  a  little  and  gasp,  '  Isn't  your  young  lady  a 

little  too — too '  and  then  he  'd  try  to  get  the  word 

out  of  you,  and  groan  and  suffer  some  more  ;  and 
you  'd  say,  '  She  is,  rather,'  and  that  would  give  him 
courage,  and  he  'd  say,  '  I  don't  mean  that  she 's  so 

very '  'Of  course  not.'  'You  understand?' 

'  Perfectly.  I  see  it  myself,  now.'  '  Well  then,' — 
and  he  'd  take  your  pencil  and  begin  to  draw — '  I 


140        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

should  give  her  a  little  more Ah  1 '  f  Yes,  I  see 

the  difference.'  '  You  see  the  difference  ? '  And 
he  'd  go  off  to  some  one  else,  and  you  'd  know  that 
you'd  been  doing  the  wishy-washiest  thing  in  the 
world,  though  he  hadn't  spoken  a  word  of  criticism, 
and  couldn't.  But  he  wouldn't  have  noticed  the 
expression  at  all ;  he  'd  have  shown  you  where  your, 
drawing  was  bad.  He  doesn't  care  for  what  he 
calls  the  literature  of  a  thing ;  he  says  that  will  take 
care  of  itself  if  the  drawing's  good.  He  doesn't 
like  my  doing  these  chic  things ;  but  I  'm  going  to 
keep  it  up,  for  /  think  it 's  the  nearest  Avay  to 
illustrating." 

She  took  her  sketch  and  pinned  it  up  on  the  door. 

"And  has  Mr.  Beaton  been  about,  yet?"  asked 
her  mother. 

"  No,"  said  the  girl,  with  her  back  still  turned  ; 
and  she  added,  "  I  believe  he 's  in  New  York ;  Mr. 
Wetmore  's  seen  him." 

"It's  a  little  strange  he  doesn't  call." 

"  It  would  be  if  he  were  not  an  artist.  But 
artists  never  do  anything  like  other  people.  He 
was  on  his  good  behaviour  while  he  was  with'  us, 
and  he 's  a  great  deal  more  conventional  than  most 
of  them  ;  but  even  he  can't  keep  it  up.  That 's  what 
makes  me  really  think  that  women  can  never 
amount  to  anything  in  art.  They  keep  all  their 
appointments,  and  fulfil  all  their  duties  just  as  if 
they  didn't  know  anything  about  art.  Well,  most 
of  them  don't.  We  've  got  that  new  model  to-day." 

"  What  new  model  ? " 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        141 

"  The  one  Mr.  Wetmore  was  telling  us  about — 
the  old  German  ;  he  's  splendid.  He 's  got  the  most 
beautiful  head ;  just  like  the  old  masters'  things. 
He  used  to  be /Humphrey  Williams's  model  for  his 
biblical  pieces ;  but  since  he 's  dead,  the  old  man 
hardly  gets  anything  to  do.  Mr.  Wetmore  says 
there  isn't  anybody  in  the  Bible  that  Williams 
didn't  paint  him  as.  He 's  the  Law  and  the  Prophets 
in  all  his  Old  Testament  pictures,  and  he 's  Joseph, 
Peter,  Judas  Iscariot,  and  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees 
in  the  New." 

"  It 's  a  good  thing  people  don't  know  how  artists 
work,  or  some  of  the  most  sacred  pictures  would 
have  no  influence,"  said  Mrs.  Leighton. 

"  Why,  of  course  not !  "  cried  the  girl.  "  And  the 
influence  is  the  last  thing  a  painter  thinks  of — or 
supposes  he  thinks  of.  What  he  knows  he  's  anxious 
about  is  the  drawing  and  the  colour.  But  people 
will  never  understand  how  simple  artists  are.  When 
I  reflect  what  a  complex  and  sophisticated  being  / 
am,  I  in  afraid  I  can  never  come  to  anything  in  art. 
Or  I  should  be  if  I  hadn't  genius." 

"  Do  you  think  Mr.  Beaton  is  very  simple  ? "  asked 
Mrs.  Leighton. 

"  Mr.  Wetmore  doesn't  think  he 's  very  much  of 
an  artist.  He  thinks  he  talks  too  well.  They 
believe  that  if  a  man  can  express  himself  clearly  he 
can't  paint." 

"  And  what  do  you  believe  1 " 

"  Oh,  /  can  express  myself,  too." 

The  mother  seemed  to  be  satisfied  with  this  evasion. 


142  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

After  a  while  she  said,  "  I  presume  he  will  call  when 
he  gets  settled." 

The  girl  made  no  answer  to  this.  "  One  of  the 
girls  says  that  old  model  is  an  educated  man.  He 
was  in  the  war,  and  lost  a  hand.  Doesn't  it  seem 
a  pity  for  such  a  man  to  have  to  sit  to  a  class  of 
affected  geese  like  us  as  a  model?  I  declare  it 
makes  me  sick.  And  we  shall  keep  him  a  week, 
and  pay  him  six  or  seven  dollars  for  the  use  of  his 
grand  old  head,  and  then  what  will  he  do?  The 
last  time  he  Avas  regularly  employed  was  when  Mr. 
Mace  was  working  at  his  Damascus  Massacre.  Then 
he  wanted  so  many  Arab  sheiks  and  Christian  elders 
that  he  kept  old  Mr.  Lindau  steadily  employed  for 
six  months.  Now  he  has  to  pick  up  odd  jobs  where 
he  can." 

"  I  suppose  he  has  his  pension,"  said  Mrs.  Leigh- 
ton. 

"  No ;  one  of  the  girls  " — that  was  the  way  Alma 
always  described  her  fellow-students — ':  says  he  has 
no  pension.  He  didn't  apply  for  it  for  a  long  time, 
and  then  there  was  a  hitch  about  it,  and  it  was  some- 
thinged — vetoed,  I  believe  she  said." 

'  Who  vetoed  it  1 "  asked  Mrs.  Leighton,  with 
some  curiosity  about  the  process,  which  she  held  in 
reserve. 

"  I  don't  know — whoever  vetoes  things.  I  wonder 
what  Mr.  Wetmore  docs  think  of  us — his  class.  "Wo 
must  seem  perfectly  crazy.  There  isn't  one  of  us 
really  knows  what  she  's  doing  it  for.  or  what  she 
expects  to  happen  when  she  's  done  it.  I  suppose 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  143 

every  one  thinks  she  has  genius.  I  know  the 
Nebraska  widow  does,  for  she  says  that  unless  you 
have  genius  it  isn't  the  least  use.  Everybody 's 
puzzled  to  know  what  she  does  with  her  baby  when 
she 's  at  work — whether  she  gives  it  soothing  syrup. 
I  wonder  how  Mr.  Wetmore  can  keep  from  laughing 
in  our  faces.  I  know  he  does  behind  our  backs." 

Mrs.  Leighton's  mind  wandered  back  to  another 
point.  "  Then  if  he  says  Mr.  Beaton  can't  paint,  I 
presume  he  doesn't  respect  him  very  much." 

"Oh,  he  never  said  he  couldn't  paint.  But  I 
know  he  thinks  so.  He  says  he 's  an  excellent 
critic." 

"Alma,"  her  mother  said,  with  the  effect  of  break- 
ing off,  "  what  do  you  suppose  is  the  reason  he  hasn't 
been  near  us  ? " 

"  Why,  I  don't  know,  mamma,  except  that  it 
would  have  been  natural  for  another  person  to  come, 
and  he 's  an  artist — at  least,  artist  enough  for  that." 

"  That  doesn't  account  for  it  altogether.  He  was 
very  nice  at  St.  Barnaby,  and  seemed  so  interested 
in  you — your  work." 

"  Plenty  of  people  were  nice  at  St.  Barnaby.  That 
rich  Mrs.  Horn  couldn't  contain  her  joy  when  she 
heard  we  were  coming  to  New  York,  but  she  hasn't 
poured  in  upon  us  a  great  deal  since  we  got  here." 

"  But  that 's  different.  She  's  very  fashionable, 
and  she 's  taken  up  with  her  own  set.  But  Mr. 
Beaton 's  one  of  our  kind." 

"  Thank  you.  Papa  wasn't  quite  a  tombstone - 
cutter,  mamma." 


144  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  That  makes  it  all  the  harder  to  bear.  He  can't 
be  ashamed  of  us.  Perhaps  he  doesn't  know  where 
we  are." 

"  Do  you  wish  to  send  him  your  card,  mamma  1 " 
The  girl  flushed  and  towered  in  scorn  of  the  idea. 

"  Why,  no,  Alma,"  returned  her  mother. 

"Well,  then,"  said  Alma. 

But  Mrs.  Leighton  was  not  so  easily  quelled.  She 
had  got  her  mind  on  Mr.  Beaton,  and  she  could  not 
detach  it  at  once.  Besides,  she  was  one  of  those 
women  (they  are  commoner  than  the  same  sort  of 
men)  whom  it  does  not  pain  to  take  out  their  most 
intimate  thoughts  and  examine  them  in  the  light 
of  other  people's  opinions.  "  But  I  don't  see  how 
he  can  behave  so.  He  must  know  that " 

"  That  ivhat,  mamma  ?  "  demanded  the  girl. 

"  That  he  influenced  us  a  great  deal  in 
coming " 

"  He  didn't.  If  he  dared  to  presume  to  think 
such  a  thing " 

"  Now,  Alma,"  said  her  mother  with  the  clinging 
persistence  of  such  natures,  "  you  know  he  did. 
And  it 's  no  use  for  you  to  pretend  that  we  didn't 
count  upon  him  in — in  every  way.  You  may  not  have 
noticed  his  attentions,  and  I  don't  say  you  did,  but 
others  certainly  did ;  and  I  must  say  that  I  didn't 
expect  he  would  drop  us  so." 

"  Drop  us  !  "  cried  Alma,  in  a  fury.     "  Oh  ! " 

"  Yes,  drop  us,  Alma.  He  must  know  where  we 
are.  Of  course,  Mr.  Wetmore  's  spoken  to  him  about 
you,  and  it 's  a  shame  that  he  hasn't  been  near  us. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        145 

I  should  have  thought  common  gratitude,  common 
decency,  would  have  brought  him  after — after  all 
we  did  for  him." 

"  We  did  nothing  for  him — nothing  !  He  paid  his 
board,  and  that  ended  it." 

"  No,  it  didn't,  Alma.  You  know  what  he  used 
to  say — about  its  being  like  home,  and  all  that; 
and  I  must  say  that  after  his  attentions  to  you,  and 
all  the  things  you  told  me  he  said,  I  expected  some- 
thing very  dif " 

A  sharp  peal  of  the  door-bell  thrilled  through  the 
house,  and  as  if  the  pull  of  the  bell-wire  had 
twitched  her  to  her  feet,  Mrs.  Leighton  sprang 
up  and  grappled  with  her  daughter  in  their  common 
terror. 

They  both  glared  at  the  clock  and  made  sure  that 
it  was  five  minutes  after  nine.      Then  they  aban- 
doned them  some  moments  to  the  unrestricted  play 
of  their  apprehensions. 
VOL.  I—  1 


IL 


"  WHY,  Alma,"  whispered  the  mother,  "  who  in 
the  world  can  it  be  at  this  time  of  night  ?  You 
don't  suppose  he " 

"  Well,  I  'm  not  going  to  the  door  anyhow, 
mother,  I  don't  care  who  it  is;  and  of  course  he 
wouldn't  be  such  a  goose  as  to  come  at  this  hour." 
She  put  on  a  look  of  miserable  trepidation,  and 
shrank  back  from  the  door,  while  the  hum  of  the 
bell  died  away  in  the  hall. 

"  What  shall  we  do  1 "  asked  Mrs.  Leighton 
helplessly. 

"  Let  him  go  away — whoever  they  are,"  said 
Alma. 

Another  and  more  peremptory  ring  forbade  them 
refuge  in  this  simple  expedient. 

"  Oh  dear  !  what  shall  we  do  ?  Perhaps  it 's 
a  despatch." 

The  conjecture  moved  Alma  to  no  more  than  a 
rigid  stare.  "  I  shall  not  go,"  she  said.  A  third 
ring  more  insistent  than  the  others  followed,  and 
she  said  :  "  You  go  ahead,  mamma,  and  I  '11  come 
behind  to  scream  .if  it 's  anybody.  We  can  look 
through  the  side-lights  at  the  door  first." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        147 

Mrs.  Leighton  fearfully  led  the  way  from  the 
back  chamber  where  they  had  been  sitting,  and 
slowly  descended  the  stairs.  Alma  came  behind 
and  turned  up  the  hall  gas-jet  with  a  sudden  flash 
that  made  them  both  jump  a  little.  The  gas  inside 
rendered  it  more  difficult  to  tell  who  was  on  the 
threshold,  but  Mrs.  Leighton  decided  from  a  timor- 
ous peep  through  the  scrims  that  it  was  a  lady  and 
gentleman.  Something  in  this  distribution  of  sex 
emboldened  her  ;  she  took  her  life  in  her  hand,  and 
opened  the  door. 

The  lady  spoke.  "  Does  Mrs.  Leighton  live  heah  1" 
she  said,  in  a  rich,  throaty  voice  ;  and  she  feigned  a 
reference  to  the  agent's  permit  she  held  in  her  hand. 

"Yes,"  said  Mrs.  Leighton;  she  mechanically 
occupied  the  doorway,  while  Alma  already  quivered 
behind  her  with  impatience  of  her  impoliteness. 

"  Oh,"  said  the  lady,  who  began  to  appear  more 
and  more  a  young  lady,  "  Ah  didn't  know  but  Ah 
had  mistaken  the  ho'se.  Ah  suppose  it 's  rather 
late  to  see  the  Apawtments,  and  Ah  most  ask  you 
to  pawdon  us."  She  put  this  tentatively,  with  a 
delicately  growing  recognition  of  Mrs.  Leighton  as 
the  lady  of  the  house,  and  a  humorous  intelligence 
of  the  situation  in  the  glance  she  threw  Alma  over 
her  mother's  shoulder.  "  Ah  'm  afraid  we  most 
have  frightened  you." 

"  Oh,  not  at  all."  said  Alma  ;  and  at  the  same 
time  her  mother  said,  "  Will  you  walk  in,  please  ? " 

The  gentleman  promptly  removed  his  hat  and 
made  the  Leigh  tons  an  inclusive  bo\v.  "  You  awe 
L 


148  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

very  kind,  madam,  and  I  am  sorry  for  the  trouble 
we  awe  giving  you."  He  was  tall  and  severe-look- 
ing, with  a  grey,  trooperish  moustache  and  iron- 
grey  hair,  and,  as  Alma  decided,  iron-grey  eyes. 
His  daughter  was  short,  plump,  and  fresh-coloured, 
with  an  effect  of  liveliness  that  did  not  all  express 
itself  in  her  broad-vowelled,  rather  formal  speech, 
with  its  odd  valuations  of  some  of  the  auxiliary 
verbs,  and  its  total  elision  of  the  canine  letter. 

"We  awe  from  the  Soath,"  she  said,  "and  we 
arrived  this  mawning,  but  we  got  this  cyahd  from 
the  brokah  just  befo'  dinnah,  and  so  we  awe  rathah 
late." 

"Not  at  all;  it's  only  nine  o'clock,"  said  Mrs. 
Leighton,  in  condonation.  She  looked  up  from  the 
card  the  young  lady  had  given  her,  and  explained, 
"  We  haven't  got  in  our  servants  yet,  and  we  had  to 
answer  the  bell  ourselves,  and " 

"  You  were  frightened,  of  coase,"  said  the  young 
lady  caressingly. 

The  gentleman  said  they  ought  not  to  have  come 
so  late,  and  he  offered  some  formal  apologies. 

"We  should  have  been  just  as  much  scared  any 
time  after  five  o'clock,"  Alma  said  to  the  sympathetic 
intelligence  in  the  girl's  face. 

She  laughed  out.  "  Of  coase  !  Ah  would  have 
my  hawt  in  my  moath  all  day  long  too,  if  Ah  was 
living  in  a  big  hoase  alone." 

A  moment  of  stiffness  followed ;  Mrs.  Leighton 
would  have  liked  to  withdraw  from  the  intimacy  of 
the  situation,  but  she  did  not  know  how.  It  was 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  149 

very  well  for  these  people  to  assume  to  be  what  they 
pretended ;  but,  she  reflected  too  late,  she  had  no 
proof  of  it  except  the  agent's  permit.  They  were 
all  standing  in  the  hall  together,  and  she  prolonged 
the  awkward  pause  while  she  examined  the  permit. 
"  You  are  Mr.  Woodburn  1 "  she  asked,  in  a  way 
that  Alma  felt  implied  he  might  not  be. 

"  Yes,  madam  ;  from  Charlottesboag,  Virginia," 
he  answered,  with  the  slight  umbrage  a  man  shows 
when  the  strange  cashier  turns  his  check  over  and 
questions  him  before  cashing  it. 

Alma  writhed  internally,  but  outwardly  remained 
subordinate ;  she  examined  the  other  girl's  dress, 
and  decided  in  a  superficial  consciousness  that  she 
had  made  her  own  bonnet. 

"  I  shall  be  glad  to  show  you  my  rooms,"  said 
Mrs  Leighton,  with  an  irrelevant  sigh.  "  You  must 
excuse  their  being  not  just  as  I  should  wish  them. 
We  're  hardly  settled  yet." 

"  Don't  speak  of  it,  madam,"  said  the  gentleman, 
"  if  you  can  overlook  the  trouble  we  awe  giving  you 
at  such  an  unseasonable  houah." 

"  Ah  'm  a  hoase-keepah  mahself,"  Miss  Woodburn 
joined  in,  "  and  Ah  know  ho'  to  accyoant  fo'  every- 
thing." 

Mrs.  Leighton  led  the  way  upstairs,  and  the 
young  lady  decided  upon  the  large  front  room  and 
small  side-room  on  the  third  story.  She  said  she 
could  take  the  small  one,  and  the  other  was  so  large 
that  her  father  could  both  sleep  and  work  in  it. 
She  seemed  not  ashamed  to  ask  if  Mrs.  Leighton's 


150  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

price  was  inflexible,  but  gave  way  laughing  when 
her  father  refused  to  have  any  bargaining,  with  a 
haughty  self-respect  which  he  softened  to  deference 
for  Mrs.  Leighton.  His  impulsiveness  opened  the 
way  for  some  confidences  from  her,  and  before  the 
affair  was  arranged  she  was  enjoying  in  her  quality 
of  clerical  widow  the  balm  of  the  Virginians' 
reverent  sympathy.  They  said  they  were  Church 
people  themselves. 

"  Ah  don't  know  what  yo'  mothah  means  by  yo' 
hoase  not  being  in  oddah,"  the  young  lady  said  to 
Alma,  as  they  went  downstairs  together.  "  Ah  'm 
u  great  hoase-keepah  mahself,  and  Ah  mean  what 
Ah  say." 

They  had  all  turned  mechanically  into  the  room 
where  the  Leightons  were  sitting  when  the  Wood- 
burns  rang.  Mr.  Woodburn  consented  to  sit  down, 
and  he  remained  listening  to  Mrs.  Leighton  while 
his  daughter  bustled  up  to  the  sketches  pinned 
round  the  room,  and  questioned  Alma  about  them. 

"  Ah  suppose  you  awe  going  to  be  a  great  aw- 
tust?"  she  said,  in  friendly  banter,  when  Alma  owned 
to  having  done  the  things.  "  Ah  Ve  a  great  notion  to 
take  a  few  lessons  mahself.  Who 's  yo'  teachah  ? " 

Alma  said  she  was  drawing  in  Mr.  Wetmore's 
class,  and  Miss  Woodburn  said  :  "  Well,  it 's  just 
beautiful,  Miss  Leighton;  it's  grand.  Ah  suppose 
it 's  raght  expensive,  now  ?  Mali  goodness  !  we  have 
to  cyoant  the  coast  so  much  nowadays,  it  seems  to 
me  we  do  nothing  but  cyoant  it.  Ah  'd  like  to  bah 
something  once  without  askin'  the  price." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  151 

"  Well,  if  you  didn't  ask  it,"  said  Alma,  "  I  don't 
believe  Mr.  Wetmore  would  ever  know  what  the 
price  of  his  lessons  was.  He  has  to  think,  when 
you  ask  him." 

"Why,  he  most  be  chomming,"  said  Miss  Wood- 
burn.  "Perhaps  Ah  maght  get  the  lessons  for 
nothing  from  him-  Well,  Ah  believe  in  my  soul 
Ah  '11  trah.  Now  ho'  did  you  begin  ?  and  ho'  do 
you  expect  to  get  anything  oat  of  it  1 "  She  turned 
on  Alma  eyes  brimming  with  a  shrewd  mixture  of 
fun  and  earnest,  and  Alma  made  note  of  the  fact 
that  she  had  an  early  nineteenth-century  face, 
round,  arch,  a  little  coquettish,  but  extremely  sen- 
sible and  unspoiled-looking,  such  as  used  to  be 
painted  a  good  deal  in  miniature  at  that  period ;  a 
tendency  of  her  brown  hair  to  twine  and  twist  at 
the  temples  helped  the  effect ;  a  high  comb  would 
have  completed  it,  Alma  felt,  if  she  had  her  bonnet 
off.  It  was  almost  a  Yankee  country-girl  type  ;  but 
perhaps  it  appeared  so  to  Alma  because  it  was,  like 
that,  pure  Anglo-Saxon.  Alma  herself,  with  her 
dull  dark  skin,  slender  in  figure,  slow  in  speech, 
with  aristocratic  forms  in  her  long  hands,  and  the 
oval  of  her  fine  face  pointed  to  a  long  chin,  felt  her- 
self much  more  Southern  in  style  than  this  bloom- 
ing, bubbling,  bustling  Virginian. 

"I  don't  know,"  she  answered  slowly. 

"  Going  to  take  po'traits,"  suggested  Miss  Wood- 
burn,  "  or  just  paint  the  ahdeal  1 "  A  demure  bur- 
lesque lurked  in  her  tone. 

"I  suppose  I  don't  expect  to  paint  at  all,"  said 


152       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

Alma.  "I  'm  going  to  illustrate  books — if  anybody 
will  let  me." 

"  Ah  should  think  they  'd  just  joamp  at  you," 
said  Miss  Woodburn.  "Ah  '11  tell  you  what  let 's  do, 
Miss  Leighton :  you  make  some  pictures,  and  Ah  '11 
wrahte  a  book  fo'  them.  Ah  've  got  to  do  some- 
thing. Ah  maght  as  well  wrahte  a  book.  You  know 
we  Southerners  have  all  had  to  go  to  woak.  But 
Ah  don't  mand  it.  I  tell  papa  I  shouldn't  ca'  fo' 
the  disgrace  of  bein'  poo'  if  it  wasn't  fo'  the  incon- 
venience." 

"  Yes,  it 's  inconvenient,"  said  Alma ;  "  but  you 
forget  it  when  you  're  at  work,  don't  you  think  ? " 

"  Mah,  yes  !  Perhaps  that 's  one  reason  why  poo' 
people  have  to  woak  so  hawd — to  keep  their  mands 
off  their  poverty." 

The  girls  both  tittered,  and  turned  from  talking 
in  a  low  tone  with  their  backs  toward  their  elders, 
and  faced  them. 

"Well,  Madison,"  said  Mr.  Woodburn,  "it  is 
time  we  should  go.  I  bid  you  good  night,  madam," 
he  bowed  to  Mrs.  Leighton.  "Good  night,"  he 
bowed  again  to  Alma. 

His  daughter  took  leave  of  them  in  formal  phrase, 
but  with  a  jolly  cordiality  of  manner  that  deforma- 
lised  it.  "We  shall  be  roand  raght  soon  in  the 
mawning,  then,"  she  threatened  at  the  door. 

"We  shall  be  all  ready  for  you,"  Alma  called 
after  her  down  the  steps. 

"  Well,  Alma  1 "  her  mother  asked,  when  the  door 
closed  upon  them. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       153 

"She  doesn't  know  any  more  about  art"  said 
Alma,  "  than — nothing  at  all.  But  she 's  jolly  and 
good-hearted.  She  praised  everything  that  was  bad 
in  my  sketches,  and  said  she  was  going  to  take 
lessons  herself.  When  a  person  talks  about  taking 
lessons,  as  if  they  could  learn  it,  you  know  where 
they  belong  artistically." 

Mrs.  Leighton  shook  her  head  with  a  sigh.  "  I 
wish  I  knew  where  they  belonged  financially.  We 
shall  have  to  get  in  two  girls  at  once.  I  shall  have 
to  go  out  the  first  thing  in  the  morning,  and  then 
our  troubles  will  begin." 

"Well,  didn't  you  want  them  to  begin?  I  will 
stay  home  and  help  you  get  ready.  Our  prosperity 
couldn't  begin  without  the  troubles,  if  you  mean 
boarders,  and  boarders  mean  servants.  I  shall  be 
very  glad  to  be  afflicted  with  a  cook  for  a  while 
myself." 

"  Yes ;  but  we  don't  know  anything  about  these 
people,  or  whether  they  will  be  able  to  pay  us.  Did 
she  talk  as  if  they  were  well  off  ] " 

"  She  talked  as  if  they  were  poor ;  poo'  she  called 
it." 

"Yes,  how  queerly  she  pronounced,"  said  Mrs. 
Leighton.  "  Well,  I  ought  to  have  told  them  that  I 
required  the  first  week  in  advance." 

"  Mamma  !  If  that 's  the  way  you  're  going  to 
act— 

"Oh,  of  course,  I  couldn't,  after  he  wouldn't  let 
her  bargain  for  the  rooms.  I  didn't  Iike4,hat." 

"  /  did.  And  you  can  see  that  they  were  perfect 
7* 


154       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

ladies  ;  or  at  least  one  of  them."  Alma  laughed  at 
herself,  but  her  mother  did  not  notice. 

"  Their  being  ladies  won't  help  if  they  Ve  got  no 
money.  It  '11  make  it  all  the  worse." 

"  Very  well,  then ;  we  have  no  money,  either. 
We  're  a  match  for  them  any  day  there.  We  can 
show  them  that  two  can  play  at  that  game," 


III. 


ANGUS  BEATON'S  studio  looked  at  first  glance  like 
many  other  painters'  studios.  A  grey  wall  quad- 
rangularly  vaulted  to  a  large  north  light ;  casts  of 
feet,  hands,  faces  hung  to  nails  about ;  prints, 
sketches  in  oil  and  water-colour  stuck  here  and 
there  lower  down ;  a  rickety  table,  with  paint  and 
palettes  and  bottles  of  varnish  and  siccative  tossed 
comfortlessly  on  it ;  an  easel,  with  a  strip  of  some 
faded  mediaeval  silk  trailing  from  it ;  a  lay  figure 
simpering  in  incomplete  nakedness,  with  its  head  on 
one  side,  and  a  stocking  on  one  leg,  and  a  Japanese 
dress  dropped  before  it ;  dusty  rugs  and  skins  kick- 
ing over  the  varnished  floor ;  canvases  faced  to  the 
mop-board ;  an  open  trunk  overflowing  with  cos- 
tumes :  these  features  one  might  notice  anywhere. 
But  besides  there  was  a  bookcase  with  an  unusual 
number  of  books  in  it,  arid  there  was  an  open 
colonial  writing-desk,  claw-footed,  brass-handled,  and 
scutcheoned,  with  foreign  periodicals — French  and 
English — littering  its  leaf,  and  some  pages  of  manu- 
script scattered  among  them.  Above  all,  there  was 
a  sculptor's  revolving  stand,  supporting  a  bust  which 
Beaton  was  modelling,  with  an  eye  fixed  as  simul- 


156  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

taneously  as  possible  on  the  clay  and  on  the  head  of 
the  old  man  who  sat  on  the  platform  beside  it. 

Few  men  have  been  able  to  get  through  the 
world  with  several  gifts  to  advantage  in  all ;  and 
most  men  seem  handicapped  for  the  race  if  they 
have  more  than  one.  But  they  are  apparently 
immensely  interested  as  well  as  distracted  by  them. 
When  Beaton  was  writing,  he  would  have  agreed, 
up  to  a  certain  point,  with  any  one  who  said  litera- 
ture was  his  proper  expression ;  but  then,  when  he 
was  painting,  up  to  a  certain  point,  he  would  have 
maintained  against  the  world  that  he  was  a  colourist 
and  supremely  a  colourist.  At  the  certain  point  in 
either  art  he  was  apt  to  break  away  in  a  frenzy  of 
disgust,  and  wreak  himself  upon  some  other.  In 
these  moods  he  sometimes  designed  elevations  of 
buildings,  very  striking,  very  original,  very  chic, 
very  everything  but  habitable.  It  was  in  this  way 
that  he  had  tried  his  hand  on  sculpture,  which  he 
had  at  first  approached  rather  slightingly  as  a  mere 
decorative  accessory  of  architecture.  But  it  had 
grown  in  his  respect  till  he  maintained  that  the  ac- 
cessory business  ought  to  be  all  the  other  way  :  that 
temples  should  be  raised  to  enslmne  statues,  not 
statues  made  to  ornament  temples ;  that  was  putting 
the  cart  before  the  horse  with  a  vengeance.  This 
was  when  he  had  carried  a  plastic  study  so  far  that 
the  sculptors  who  saw  it  said  that  Beaton  might 
have  been  an  architect,  but  would  certainly  never 
be  a  sculptor.  At  the  same  time  he  did  some 
hurried,  nervous  things  that  had  a  popular  charm, 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        157 

and  that  sold  in  plaster  reproductions,  to  the  profit 
of  another.  Beaton  justly  despised  the  popular 
charm  in  these,  as  well  as  in  the  paintings  he  sold 
from  time  to  time  ;  he  said  it  was  flat  burglary  to 
have  taken  money  for  them,  and  he  would  have 
been  living  almost  wholly  upon  the  bounty  of  the  old 
tombstone-cutter  in  Syracuse  if  it  had  not  been  for 
the  syndicate  letters  which  he  supplied  to  Fulkerson 
for  ten  dollars  a  week. 

They  were  very  well  done,  but  he  hated  doing 
them  after  the  first  two  or  three,  and  had  to  be 
punched  up  for  them  by  Fulkerson,  who  did  not 
•cease  to  prize  them,  and  who  never  failed  to  punch 
him  up.  Beaton  being  what  he  was,  Fulkerson  was 
his  creditor  as  well  as  patron  ;  and  Fulkerson  being 
what  he  was,  had  an  enthusiastic  patience  with  the 
•elusive,  facile,  adaptable,  unpractical  nature  of 
Beaton.  He  was  very  proud  of  his  art-letters,  as  he 
called  them ;  but  then  Fulkerson  was  proud  of 
•everything  he  secured  for  his  syndicate.  The  fact 
that  he  had  secured  it  gave  it  value ;  he  felt  as  if  he 
had  written  it  himself. 

One  art  trod  upon  another's  heels  with  Beaton. 
The  day  before  he  had  rushed  upon  canvas  the  con- 
ception of  a  picture  which  he  said  to  himself  was 
glorious,  and  to  others  (at  the  table  d'hote  of  Maroni) 
was  not  bad.  He  had  worked  at  it  in  a  fury  till 
^he  light  failed  him,  and  he  execrated  the  dying 
-day.  But  he  lit  his  lamp,  and  transferred  the  pro- 
cess of  his  thinking  from  the  canvas  to  the  opening 
of  the  syndicate  letter  which  he  knew  Fulkerson 


158       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

would  be  coming  for  in  the  morning.  He  remained 
talking  so  long  after  dinner  in  the  same  strain  as  he 
had  painted  and  written  in  that  he  could  not  finish 
his  letter  that  night.  The  next  morning,  while  he  was 
making  his  tea  for  breakfast,  the  postman  brought  him 
a  letter  from  his  father  enclosing  a  little  cheque,  and 
begging  him  with  tender,  almost  deferential,  urgence 
to  come  as  lightly  upon  him  as  possible,  for  just  now 
his  expenses  were  very  heavy.  It  brought  tears  of 
shame  into  Beaton's  eyes — the  fine  smouldering,  float- 
ing eyes  that  many  ladies  admired,  under  the  thick 
bang — and  he  said  to  himself  that  if  he  were  half  a 
man  he  would  go  home  and  go  to  work  cutting  grave- 
stones in  his  father's  shop.  But  he  would  wait,  at 
least,  to  finish  his  picture ;  and  as  a  sop  to  his  con- 
science, to  stay  its  immediate  ravening,  he  resolved  to 
finish  that  syndicate  letter  first,  and  borrow  enough 
money  from  Fulkerson  to  be  able  to  send  his  father's 
cheque  back  ;  or  if  not  that,  then  to  return  the  sum  of 
it  partly  in  Fulkerson's  cheque.  While  he  still  teemed 
with  both  of  these  good  intentions  the  old  man 
frqm  whom  he  was  modelling  his  head  of  Judas 
came,  and  Beaton  saw  that  he  must  get  through 
with  him  before  he  finished  either  the  picture  or  the 
letter ;  he  would  have  to  pay  him  for  the  time  any- 
way. He  utilised  the  remorse  with  which  he  was 
tingling  to  give  his  Judas  an  expression  which  he 
found  novel  in  the  treatment  of  that  character — a 
look  of  such  touching,  appealing  self-abhorrence  that 
Beaton's  artistic  joy  in  it  amounted  to  rapture ; 
between  the  breathless  moments  when  he  worked  in 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       159 

dead  silence  for  an  effect  that  was  trying  to  escape 
him,  he  sang  and  whistled  fragments  of  comic  opera. 

In  one  of  the  hushes  there  came  a  blow  on  the 
outside  of  the  door  that  made  Beaton  jump,  and 
swear  with  a  modified  profanity  that  merged  itself 
I'n  apostrophic  prayer.  He  knew  it  must  be  Fulker- 
son,  and  after  roaring,  "  Come  in ! "  he  said  to  the 
model,  "  That  '11  do  this  morning,  Lindau." 

Fulkerson  squared  his  feet  in  front  of  the  bust, 
and  compared  it  by  fleeting  glances  with  the  old 
man  as  he  got  stiffly  up,  and  suffered  Beaton  to  help 
him  on  with  his  thin  shabby  overcoat. 

"  Can  you  come  to-morrow,  Lindau  ? " 

"No,  not  to-morrow,  Mr.  Peaton.  I  haf  to  zit 
for  the  young  lad  ties." 

"  Oh  ! "  said  Beaton.  "  Wetmore's  class  ?  Is 
Miss  Leighton  doing  you  ? " 

"  I  don't  know  their  namess,"  Lindau  began, 
when  Fulkerson  said 

"  Hope  you  haven't  forgotten  mine,  Mr.  Lindau  ? 
I  met  you  with  Mr.  March  at  Maroni's  one  night." 
Fulkerson  offered  him  a  universally  shakable  hand. 

"  Oh  yes  !  I  am  gladt  to  zee  you  again,  Mr. 
Vulkerzon.  And  Mr.  Marge — he  don't  zeem  to 
gome  any  more  ? " 

"  Up  to  his  eyes  in  work.  Been  moving  on  from 
Boston  and  getting  settled,  and  starting  in  on  our 
enterprise.  Beaton  here  hasn't  got  a  very  flattering 
likeness  of  you,  hey  ?  Well,  good  morning,"  he  said, 
for  Lindau  appeared  not  to  have  heard  him,  and  was 
escaping  with  a  bow  through  the  door. 


160       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

Beaton  lit  a  cigarette  which  he  pinched  nervously 
between  his  lips  before  he  spoke.  "  You  've  come 
for  that  letter,  I  suppose,  Fulkerson  ?  It  isn't  done." 

Fulkerson  turned  from  staring  at  the  bust  to 
which  he  had  mounted.  "  What  you  fretting  about 
that  letter  for  ?  I  don't  want  your  letter." 

Beaton  stopped  biting  his  cigarette,  and  looked  at 
him.  "  Don't  want  my  letter  ?  Oh,  very  good  ! " 
he  bristled  up.  He  took  his  cigarette  from  his  lips, 
and  blew  the  smoke  through  his  nostrils,  and  then 
looked  at  Fulkerson. 

"  No ;  /  don't  want  your  letter ;  I  want  you." 
Beaton  disdained  to  ask  an  explanation,  but  he 
internally  lowered  his  crest,  while  he  continued  to 
look  at  Fulkerson  without  changing  his  defiant 
countenance.  This  suited  Fulkerson  well  enough, 
and  he  went  on  with  relish  :  "  I  'm  going  out  of  the 
syndicate  business,  old  man,  and  I  'm  on  a  new 
thing."  He  put  his  leg  over  the  back  of  a  chair 
and  rested  his  foot  on  its  seat,  and  with  one  hand 
in  his  pocket,  he  laid  the  scheme  of  Every  Other 
Week  before  Beaton  with  the  help  of  the  other.  The 
artist  went  about  the  room,  meanwhile,  with  an 
effect  of  indifference  which  by  no  means  offended 
Fulkerson.  He  took  some  water  into  his  mouth 
from  a  tumbler,  which  he  blew  in  a  fine  mist  over 
the  head  of  Judas,  before  swathing  it  in  a  dirty 
cotton  cloth ;  he  washed  his  brushes  and  set  his 
palette ;  he  put  up  on  his  easel  the  picture  he  had 
blocked  on  the  day  before,  and  stared  at  it  with  a 
gloomy  face ;  then  he  gathered  the  sheets  of  his 


I 

A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        161 

unfinished  letter  together  and  slid  them  into  a 
drawer  of  his  writing-desk.  By  the  time  he  had 
finished  and  turned  again  to  Fulkerson,  Fulkerson 
was  saying :  "  I  did  think  we  could  have  the  first 
number  out  by  New- Year's ;  but  it  will  take  longer 
than  that — a  month  longer ;  but  I  'm  not  sorry,  for 
the  holidays  kill  everything ;  and  by  February,  or 
the  middle  of  February,  people  will  get  their  breath 
again,  and  begin  to  look  round  and  ask  what 's  new. 
Then  we  '11  reply  in  the  language  of  Shakespeare  and 
Milton,  Every  Other  Week ;  and  don't  you  forget  it." 
He  took  down  his  leg  and  asked,  "  Got  a  pipe  of 
'baccy  anywhere  ? " 

Beaton  nodded  at  a  clay  stem  sticking  out  of  a 
Japanese  vase  of  bronze  on  his  mantel.  "There's 
yours,"  he  said  ;  and  Fulkerson  said,  "  Thanks,"  and 
filled  the  pipe,  and  sat  down  and  began  to  smoke 
tranquilly. 

Beaton  saw  that  he  would  have  to  speak  now. 
"  And  what  do  you  want  with  me  1" 

"  You  1  Oh  yes  "  Fulkerson  humorously  drama- 
tised a  return  to  himself  from  a  pensive  absence. 
"  Want  you  for  the  art  department." 

Beaton  shook  his  head.  "  I  'm  not  your  man, 
Fulkerson,"  he  said  compassionately.  "  You  want 
a  more  practical  hand;  one  that's  in  touch  with 
what 's  going.  I  'm  getting  further  and  further 
away  from  this  century  and  its  claptrap.  I  don't 
believe  in  your  enterprise  ;  I  don't  respect  it,  and  I 
won't  have  anything  to  do  with  it.  It  would — 
choke  me,  that  kind  of  thing." 


162  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  That 's  all  right,"  said  Fulkerson.  He  esteemed 
a  man  who  was  not  going  to  let  himself  go  cheap. 
"  Or  if  it  isn't,  we  can  make  it.  You  and  March 
will  pull  together  first-rate.  I  don't  care  how  much 
ideal  you  put  into  the  thing ;  the  more  the  better.  I 
can  look  after  the  other  end  of  the  schooner  myself." 

"  You  don't  understand  me,"  said  Beaton.  "  I  'm 
not  trying  to  get  a  rise  out  of  you.  I  'm  in  earnest. 
"What  you  want  is  some  man  who  can  have  patience 
with  mediocrity  putting  on  the  style  of  genius,  and 
with  genius  turning  mediocrity  on  his  hands.  I 
haven't  any  luck  with  men  ;  I  don't  get  on  with 
them;  I'm  not  popular."  Beaton  recognised  the 
fact  with  the  satisfaction  which  it  somehow  always 
brings  to  human  pride. 

"  So  much  the  better  !  "  Fulkerson  was  ready  for 
him  at  this  point.  "  I  don't  want  you  to  work  the 
old  established  racket — the  reputations.  When  I 
want  them  I  '11  go  to  them  with  a  pocketful  of  rocks 
— knock-down  argument.  But  my  idea  is  to  deal 
with  the  volunteer  material.  Look  at  the  way  the 
periodicals  are  carried  on  now  !  Names  !  names  ! 
names  !  In  a  country  that 's  just  boiling  over  with 
literary  and  artistic  ability  of  every  kind  the  new 
fellows  have  no  chance.  The  editors  all  engage  their 
material.  I  don't  believe  there  are  fifty  volunteer 
contributions  printed  in  a  year  in  all  the  New  York 
magazines.  It 's  all  wrong  ;  it 's  suicidal.  Evefry 
Other  Week  is  going  back  to  the  good  old  anonymous 
system,  the  only  fair  system.  It 's  worked  well  in 
literature,  and  it  will  work  well  in  art" 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  16$ 

"  It  won't  work  well  in  art,"  said  Beaton.  "  There 
you  have  a  totally  different  set  of  conditions.  What 
you  '11  get  by  inviting  volunteer  illustrations  will  be 
a  lot  of  amateur  trash.  And  how  are  you  going  to 
submit  your  literature  for  illustration  ?  It  can't  be 
done.  At  any  rate,  J  won't  undertake  to  do  it." 

"  We  '11  get  up  a  School  of  Illustration,"  said 
Fulkerson,  with  cynical  security.  "  You  can  read 
the  things  and  explain  'em,  and  your  pupils  can 
make  their  sketches  under  your  eye.  They  wouldn't 
be  much  further  out  than  most  illustrations  are  if 
they  never  knew  what  they  were  illustrating.  You 
might  select  from  what  comes  in  and  make  up  a  sort 
of  pictorial  variations  to  the  literature  without  any 
particular  reference  to  it.  Well,  I  understand  you 
to  accept  ? " 

"  No,  you  don't." 

"  That  is,  to  consent  to  help  us  with  your  advice 
and  criticism.  That 's  all  I  want.  It  won't  commit 
you  to  anything  ;  and  you  can  be  as  anonymous  as 
anybody."  At  the  door  Fulkerson  added  :  "  By  the 
way,  the  new  man — the  fellow  that 's  taken  my  old 
syndicate  business — will  want  you  to  keep  on  ;  but 
I  guess  he  's  going  to  try  to  beat  you  down  on  the 
price  of  the  letters.  He's  going  in  for  retrench- 
ment. I  brought  along  a  cheque  for  this  one  ;  I  'm 
to  pay  for  that."  He  offered  Beaton  an  envelope. 

"  I  can't  take  it,  Fulkerson.  The  letter 's  paid  for 
already."  Fulkerson  stepped  forward  and  laid  the 
envelope  on  the  table  among  the  tubes  of  paint. 

"It  isn't  the  letter  merely.  I  thought  you 
M 


164  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

wouldn't  object  to  a  little  advance  on  your  Every 
Other  Week  work  till  you  kind  of  got  started." 

Beaton  remained  inflexible.  "  It  can't  be  done, 
Fulkerson.  Don't  I  tell  you  I  can't  sell  myself  out 
to  a  thing  I  don't  believe  in  ?  Can't  you  under- 
stand that  1" 

"  Oh  yes ;  I  can  understand  that  first-rate.  I 
don't  want  to  buy  you  ;  I  want  to  borrow  you.  It 's 
all  right.  See  1  Come  round  when  you  can  ;  I  'd 
like  to  introduce  you  to  old  March.  That 's  going 
to  be  our  address."  He  put  a  card  on  the  table 
beside  the  envelope,  and  Beaton  allowed  him  to  go 
without  making  him  take  the  cheque  back.  He  had 
remembered  his  father's  plea ;  that  unnerved  him, 
and  he  promised  himself  again  to  return  his  father's 
poor  little  cheque  and  to  work  on  that  picture  and 
give  it  to  Fulkerson  for  the  cheque  he  had  left  and 
for  his  back  debts.  He  resolved  to  go  to  work  on 
the  picture  at  once ;  he  had  set  his  palette  for  it ;  but 
first  he  looked  at  Fulkerson's  cheque.  It  was  for 
only  fifty  dollars,  and  the  canny  Scotch  blood  in 
Beaton  rebelled ;  he  could  not  let  this  picture  go  for 
any  such  money ;  he  felt  a  little  like  a  man  whose 
generosity  has  been  trifled  with.  The  conflict  of 
emotions  broke  him  up,  and  he  could  not  work. 


IV. 


THE  day  wasted  away  in  Beaton's  hands ;  at  half- 
past  four  o'clock  he  went  out  to  tea  at  the  house  of 
a  lady  who  was  At  Home  that  afternoon  from  four 
till  seven.  By  this  time  Beaton  was  in  possession 
of  one  of  those  other  selves,  of  which  we  each  have 
several  about  us,  and  was  again  the  laconic,  staccato, 
rather  worldlified  young  artist  whose  moments  of 
a  controlled  utterance  and  a  certain  distinction  of 
manner  had  commended  him  to  Mrs.  Horn's  fancy 
in  the  summer  at  St.  Barnaby. 

Mrs.  Horn's  rooms  were  large,  and  they  never 
seemed  very  full,  though  this  perhaps  was  because 
people  were  always  so  quiet.  The  ladies,  who  out- 
numbered the  men  ten  to  one,  as  they  always  do  at 
a  New  York  tea,  were  dressed  in  sympathy  with 
the  low  tone  every  one  spoke  in,  and  with  the  sub- 
dued light  which  gave  a  crepuscular  uncertainty  to 
the  few  objects,  the  dim  pictures,  the  unexcited  up- 
holstery, of  the  rooms.  One  breathed  free  of  bric-a 
brae  there,  and  the  new-comer  breathed  softly  as  one 
does  on  going  into  church  after  service  has  begun. 
This  might  be  a  suggestion  from  the  voiceless  be 
haviour  of  the  man-servant  who  let  you  in,  but  it 


166       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

was  also  because  Mrs.  Horn's  At  Home  was  a  cere- 
mony, a  decorum,  and  not  festival.  At  far  greater 
houses  there  was  more  gaiety,  at  richer  houses  there 
was  more  freedom ;  the  suppression  at  Mrs.  Horn's 
was  a  personal,  not  a  social,  effect ;  it  was  an  efflux 
of  her  character,  demure,  silentious,  vague,  but  very 
correct. 

Beaton  easily  found  his  way  to  her  around  the 
grouped  skirts  and  among  the  detached  figures,  and 
received  a  pressure  of  welcome  from  the  hand  which 
she  momentarily  relaxed  from  the  teapot.  She  sat 
behind  a  table  put  crosswise  of  a  remote  corner,  and 
offered  tea  to  people  whom  a  niece  of  hers  received 
provisionally  or  sped  finally  in  the  outer  room. 
They  did  not  usually  take  tea,  and  when  they  did 
they  did  not  usually  drink  it;  but  Beaton  was 
feverishly  glad  of  his  cup ;  he  took  rum  and  lemon 
in  it,  and  stood  talking  at  Mrs.  Horn's  side  till  the 
next  arrival  should  displace  him  :  he  talked  in  his 
French  manner. 

"I  have  been  hoping  to  see  you,"  she  said.  "I 
wanted  to  ask  you  about  the  Leightons.  Did  they 
really  come  ? " 

"  I  believe  so.  They  are  in  town — yes.  I  haven't 
seen  them." 

"  Then  you  don't  know  how  they  're  getting  on — 
that  pretty  creature,  with  her  cleverness,  and  poor 
Mrs.  Leighton  1  I  was  afraid  they  were  venturing  on 
a  rash  experiment.  Do  you  know  where  they  are  ?  " 

"In  West  Eleventh  Street  somewhere.  Miss 
Leighton  is  in  Mr.  Wetmore's  class." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       167 

"  I  must  look  them  up.  Do  you  know  their 
number  1 " 

"Not  at  the  moment.     I  can  find  out." 

"  Do,"  said  Mrs.  Horn.  "  What  courage  they 
must  have,  to  plunge  into  New  York  as  they've 
done  !  I  really  didn't  think  they  would.  I  wonder 
if  they  Ve  succeeded  in  getting  anybody  into  their 
house  yet  1 " 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Beaton. 

"I  discouraged  their  coming  all  I  could,"  she 
sighed,  "and  I  suppose  you  did  too.  But  it's  quite 
useless  trying  to  make  people  in  a  place  like  St. 
Barnaby  understand  how  it  is  in  town." 

"Yes,"  said  Beaton.  He  stirred  his  tea,  while 
inwardly  he  tried  to  believe  that  he  had  really 
discouraged  the  Leightons  from  coming  to  New 
York.  Perhaps  the  vexation  of  his  failure  made 
him  call  Mrs.  Horn  in  his  heart  a  fraud. 

"Yes,"  she  went  on.  "It  is  very,  very  hard. 
And  when  they  won't  understand,  and  rush  on 
their  doom,  you  feel  that  they  are  going  to  hold  you 
respons " 

Mrs.  Horn's  eyes  wandered  from  Beaton;  her 
voice  faltered  in  the  faded  interest  of  her  remark, 
and  then  rose  with  renewed  vigour  in  greeting  a 
lady  who  came  up  and  stretched  her  glove  across 
the  teacups. 

Beaton  got  himself  away  and  out  of  the  house 
with  a  much  briefer  adieu  to  the  niece  than  he  had 
meant  to  make.  The  patronising  compassion  of 
Mrs.  Horn  for  the  Leicjhtons  filled  him  with  mdigrna- 


168       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

tion  toward  her,  toward  himself.  There  was  no 
reason  why  he  should  not  have  ignored  them  as  he 
had  done ;  but  there  was  a  feeling.  It  was  his 
nature  to  be  careless,  and  he  had  been  spoiled  into 
recklessness ;  he  neglected  everybody,  and  only 
remembered  them  when  it  suited  his  whim  or  his 
convenience ;  but  he  fiercely  resented  the  inatten- 
tion of  others  toward  himself.  He  had  no  scruple 
about  breaking  an  engagement  or  failing  to  keep  an 
appointment ;  he  made  promises  without  thinking 
of  their  fulfilment,  and  not  because  he  was  a  faith- 
less person,  but  because  he  was  imaginative,  and 
expected  at  the  time  to  do  what  he  said,  but  was 
fickle,  and  so  did  not.  As  most  of  his  shortcomings 
were  of  a  society  sort,  no  great  harm  was  done  to 
anybody  else.  He  had  contracted  somewhat  the 
circle  of  his  acquaintance  by  what  some  people 
called  his  rudeness,  but  most  people  treated  it  as  his 
oddity,  and  were  patient  with  it.  One  lady  said 
she  valued  his  coming  when  he  said  he  would  come 
because  it  had  the  charm  of  the  unexpected.  "Only 
it  shows  that  it  isn't  always  the  unexpected  that 
happens,"  she  explained. 

It  did  not  occur  to  him  that  his  behaviour  was 
immoral ;  he  did  not  realise  that  it  was  creating  a 
reputation  if  not  a  character  for  him.  While  we 
are  still  young  we  do  not  realise  that  our  actions 
have  this  effect.  It  seems  to  us  that  people  will 
judge  us  from  what  we  think  and  feel.  Later  we 
find  out  that  this  is  impossible  ;  perhaps  we  find  it 
out  too  late ;  some  of  us  never  find  it  out  at  all. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       169 

In  spite  of  his  shame  about  the  Leightons  Beaton 
had  no  present  intention  of  looking  them  up  or 
sending  Mrs.  Horn  their  address.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  he  never  did  send  it ;  but  he  happened  to  meet 
Mr.  Wetmore  and  his  wife  at  the  restaurant  where 
he  dined,  and  he  got  it  of  the  painter  for  himself. 
He  did  not  ask  him  how  Miss  Leighton  was  getting 
on ;  but  Wetmore  launched  out,  with  Alma  for  a 
tacit  text,  on  the  futility  of  women  generally  going 
in  for  art.  "  Even  when  they  have  talent  they  Ve 
got  too  much  against  them.  Where  a  girl  doesn't 
seem  very  strong,  like  Miss  Leighton,  no  amount  of 
chic  is  going  to  help." 

His  wife  disputed  him  on  behalf  of  her  sex,  as 
women  always  do. 

"  No,  Dolly,"  he  persisted  ;  "  she  'd  better  be 
home  milking  the  cows  and  leading  the  horse  to 
water." 

"  Do  you  think  she  'd  better  be  up  till  two  in  the 
morning  at  balls  and  going  all  day  to  receptions  and 
luncheons  1 " 

"  Oh,  I  guess  it  isn't  a  question  of  that,  even  if 
she  weren't  drawing.  You  knew  them  at  home,"  he 
said  to  Beaton. 

"  Yes." 

"  I  remember.  Her  mother  said  you  suggested 
me.  Well,  the  girl  has  some  notion  of  it ;  there 's 
no  doubt  about  that.  But — she's  a  woman.  The 
trouble  with  these  talented  girls  is  that  they  're  all 
woman.  If  they  weren't,  there  wouldn't  be  much 
chance  for  the  men,  Beaton.  But  we  Ve  got  Provi- 
VOL.  I.— 8 


170  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

dence  on  our  own  side  from  the  start.  I  'm  able  to 
watch  all  their  inspirations  with  perfect  composure. 
I  know  just  how  soon  it 's  going  to  end  in  nervous 
breakdown.  Somebody  ought  to  marry  them  all 
and  put  them  out  of  their  misery." 

"  And  what  will  you  do  with  your  students  who 
are  married  already  1 "  his  wife  said.  She  felt  that 
she  had  let  him  go  on  long  enough. 

"  Oh,  they  ought  to  get  divorced." 

"  You  ought  to  be  ashamed  to  take  their  money  if 
that's  what  you  think  of  them." 

"  My  dear,  I  have  a  wife  to  support." 

Beaton  intervened  with  a  question.  "  Do  you 
mean  that  Miss  Leighton  isn't  standing  it  very  well  1 " 

"  How  do  I  know  ?  She  isn't  the  kind  that 
bends ;  she 's  the  kind  that  breaks." 

After  a  little  silence  Mrs.  Wetmore  asked,  "  Won't 
you  come  home  with  us,  Mr.  Beaton  ? " 

"  Thank  you ;  no.     I  have  an  engagement." 

"  I  don't  see  why  that  should  prevent  you,"  said 
Wetmore.  "  But  you  always  were  a  punctilious  cuss. 
Well ! " 

Beaton  lingered  over  his  cigar ;  but  no  one  else 
whom  he  knew  came  in,  and  he  yielded  to  the  three- 
fold impulse  of  conscience,  of  curiosity,  of  inclina- 
tion, in  going  to  call  at  the  Leightons'.  He  asked 
for  the  ladies,  and  the  maid  showed  him  into  the 
parlour,  where  he  found  Mrs.  Leighton  and  Miss 
Wood  burn. 

The  widow  met  him  with  a  welcome  neatly 
marked  by  resentment ;  she  meant  him  to  feel  that 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  171 

his  not  coining  sooner  had  been  noticed.  Miss 
Woodburn  bubbled  and  gurgled  on,  and  did  what 
she  could  to  mitigate  his  punishment,  but  she  did 
not  feel  authorised  to  stay  it,  till  Mrs.  Leighton,  by 
studied  avoidance  of  her  daughter's  name,  obliged 
Beaton  to  ask  for  her.  Then  Miss  Woodburn  caught 
up  her  work,  and  said,  "  Ah  '11  go  and  tell  her,  Mrs. 
Leighton."  At  the  top  of  the  stairs  she  found  Alma, 
and  Alma  tried  to  make  it  seem  as  if  she  had  not 
been  standing  there.  "  Mali  goodness,  chald  !  there 's 
the  handsomest  young  man  asking  for  you  down 
there  you  evah  saw.  Ah  told  you'  mothah  Ah 
would  come  up  fo'  you." 

"  What— who  is  it  t " 

"  Don't  you  know  1  But  ho'  could  you  1  He  's 
got  the  most  beautiful  eyes,  and  he  wea's  his  hai'  in 
a  bang,  and  he  talks  English  like  it  was  something 
else,  and  his  name  's  Mr.  Beaton." 

"  Did  he — ask  for  me  ? "  said  Alma,  with  a 
dreamy  tone.  She  put  her  hand  on  the  stairs  rail, 
and  a  little  shiver  ran  over  her. 

"  Didn't  I  tell  you  1  Of  coase  he  did  !  And  you 
ought  to  go  raght  down  if  you  want  to  save  the  poo' 
fellah's  lahfe  ;  you'  mothah's  just  freezin'  him  to 
death." 


V. 


"SHE  is;"  cried  Alma.  "Tchk!"  She  flew  down- 
stairs, and  flitted  swiftly  into  the  room,  and  fluttered 
up  to  Beaton,  and  gave  him  a  crushing  hand-shake. 

"  How  very  kind  of  you  to  come  and  see  us,  Mr. 
Beaton  !  When  did  you  come  to  New  York  ?  Don't 
you  find  it  warm  here  ?  We  've  only  just  lighted 
the  furnace,  but  with  this  mild  weather  it  seems  too 
early.  Mamma  does  keep  it  so  hot !"  She  rushed 
about  opening  doors  and  shutting  registers,  and  then 
came  back  and  sat  facing  him  from  the  sofa  with  a 
mask  of  radiant  cordiality.  "  How  have  you  been 
since  we  saw  you  1" 

"Very  well,"  said  Beaton.  "I  hope  you're  well, 
Miss  Leighton  ?" 

"  Oh,  perfectly  !  I  think  New  York  agrees  with 
us  both  wonderfully.  I  never  knew  such  air.  And 
to  think  of  our  not  having  snow  yet !  I  should 
think  everybody  would  want  to  come  here  !  Why 
don't  you  come,  Mr.  Beaton  ?  " 

Beaton  lifted  his  eyes  and  looked  at  her.  "  I — I 
live  in  New  York,"  he  faltered. 

"  In  New  York  city  /  "  she  exclaimed. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       173 

"  Surely,  Alma,"  said  her  mother,  "  you  remember 
Mr.  Beaton's  telling  us  he  lived  in  New  York." 

"  But  I  thought  you  came  from  Rochester ;  or 
was  it  Syracuse  1  I  always  get  those  places  mixed 
up." 

"  Probably  I  told  you  my  father  lived  at  Syracuse. 
I  Ve  been  in  New  York  ever  since  I  came  home  from 
Paris,"  said  Beaton,  with  the  confusion  of  a  man 
who  feels  himself  played  upon  by  a  woman. 

"  From  Paris  ! "  Alma  echoed,  leaning  forward, 
with  her  smiling  mask  tight  on.  "  Wasn't  it 
Munich,  where  you  studied  1 " 

"  I  was  at  Munich  too.     I  met  Wetmore  there." 

"  Oh,  do  you  know  Mr.  Wetmore  1 " 

"  Why,  Alma,"  her  mother  interposed  again,  "  it 
was  Mr.  Beaton  who  told  you  of  Mr.  Wetmore." 

"Was  it?  Why,  yes,  to  be  sure.  It  was  Mrs. 
Horn  ;  she  suggested  Mr.  Ilcomb.  I  remember  now. 
I  can't  thank  you  enough  for  having  sent  me  to  Mr. 
Wetmore,  Mr.  Beaton.  Isn't  he  delightful?  Oh 
yes,  I'm  a  perfect  Wetmorian,  I  can  assure  you. 
The  whole  class  is  the  same  way." 

"  I  just  met  him  and  Mrs.  Wetmore  at  dinner," 
said  Beaton,  attempting  the  recovery  of  something 
that  he  had  lost  through  the  girl's  shining  ease  and 
steely  sprightliness.  She  seemed  to  him  so  smooth 
and  hard,  with  a  repellent  elasticity  from  which  he 
was  flung  off.  "  I  hope  you  're  not  working  too 
hard,  Miss  Leighton  ? " 

"  Oh  no  !  I  enjoy  every  minute  of  it,  and  grow 
stronger  on  it.  Do  I  look  very  much  wasted  away  ? " 


174       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

She  looked  him  full  in  the  face,  brilliantly  smiling, 
and  intentionally  beautiful. 

"  No,"  he  said,  with  a  slow  sadness ;  "  I  never 
saw  you  looking  better." 

"  Poor  Mr.  Beaton  ! "  she  said,  in  recognition  of 
his  doleful  tune.  "  It  seems  to  be  quite  a  blow." 

"  Oh  no " 

"  I  remember  all  the  good  advice  you  used  to  give 
me  about  not  working  too  hard,  and  probably  it's 
that  that 's  saved  my  life — that  and  the  house-hunt- 
ing. Has  mamma  told  you  of  our  adventures  in  get- 
ting settled  1  Some  time  we  must.  It  was  such  fun  ! 
And  didn't  you  think  we  were  fortunate  to  get  such 
a  pretty  house  ?  You  must  see  both  our  parlours." 

She  jumped  up,  and  her  mother  followed  her  with 
a  bewildered  look  as  she  ran  into  the  back  parlour 
and  flashed  up  the  gas. 

"  Come  in  here,  Mr.  Beaton.  I  want  to  show  you 
the  great  feature  of  the  house."  She  opened  the  low 
windows  that  gave  upon  a  glazed  veranda  stretching 
across  the  end  of  the  room.  "  Just  think  of  this  in 
New  York !  You  can't  see  it  very  well  at  night,  but 
when  the  southern  sun  pours  in  here  all  the  after- 
noon  " 

"  Yes,  I  can  imagine  it,"  he  said.  He  glanced  up 
at  the  bird-cage  hanging  from  the  roof.  "  I  suppose 
Gypsy  enjoys  it." 

"  You  remember  Gypsy  ? "  she  said ;  and  she 
made  a  cooing,  kissing  little  noise  up  at  the  bird, 
who  responded  drowsily.  "  Poor  old  Gypsum ! 
"Well,  he  shan't  be  disturbed.  Yes,  it's  Gyp's  de- 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       175 

light,  and  Colonel  Woodburn  likes  to  write  here  in 
the  morning.  Think  of  us  having  a  real  live  author 
in  the  house  !  And  Miss  Woodburn  :  I  ;m  so  glad 
you  Ve  seen  her  !  They  're  Southern  people." 

"  Yes,  that  was  obvious  in  her  case." 

"  From  her  accent  ?  Isn't  it  fascinating  ?  I  didn't 
believe  I  could  ever  endure  Southerners,  but  we  're 
like  one  family  with  the  Woodburns.  I  should 
think  you  'd  want  to  paint  Miss  Woodburn.  Don't 
you  think  her  colouring  is  delicious  ?  And  such  a 
quaint  kind  of  eighteenth-century  type  of  beauty ! 
But  she's  perfectly  lovely  every  way,  and  every- 
thing she  says  is  so  funny.  The  Southerners  seem 
to  be  such  great  talkers ;  better  than  we  are,  don't 
you  think  ? " 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Beaton,  in  pensive  dis- 
couragement. He  was  sensible  of  being  manipu- 
lated, operated,  but  he  was  helpless  to  escape  from 
the  performer  or  to  fathom  her  motives.  His 
pensiveness  passed  into  gloom,  and  was  degenerat- 
ing into  sulky  resentment  when  he  went  away, 
after  several  failures  to  get  back  to  the  old  ground 
he  had  held  in  relation  to  Alma.  He  retrieved 
something  of  it  with  Mrs.  Leighton;  but  Alma 
glittered  upon  him  to  the  last  with  a  keen  impene- 
trable candour,  a  childlike  singleness  of  glance, 
covering  unfathomable  reserve. 

"Well,  Alma,"  said  her  mother,  when  the  door 
had  closed  upon  him. 

"  Well,  mother."  Then,  after  a  moment,  she  said, 
with  a  rush  :  "  Did  you  think  I  was  going  to  let  him 


176  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

suppose  we  were  piqued  at  his  not  coming?  Did 
you  suppose  I  was  going  to  let  him  patronise  us,  or 
think  that  we  were  in  the  least  dependent  on  his 
favour  or  friendship  ? " 

Her  mother  did  not  attempt  to  answer  her.  She 
merely  said,  "  I  shouldn't  think  he  would  come  any 
more." 

"  Well,  we  have  got  on  so  far  without  him  ;  per- 
haps we  can  live  through  the  rest  of  the  winter." 

"  I  couldn't  help  feeling  sorry  for  him.  He  was 
quite  stupefied.  I  could  see  that  he  didn't  know 
what  to  make  of  you." 

"  He 's  not  required  to  make  anything  of  me," 
said  Alma. 

"  Do  you  think  he  really  believed  you  had  for- 
gotten all  those  things  ?  " 

"  Impossible  to  say,  mamma." 

"  Well,  I  don't  think  it  was  quite  right,  Alma." 

"  I  '11  leave  him  to  you  the  next  time.  Miss 
Woodburn  said  you  were  freezing  him  to  death 
when  I  came  down." 

"  That  was  quite*  different.  But  there  won't  be 
any  next  time,  I  'm  afraid,"  sighed  Mrs.  Leighton. 

Beaton  went  home  feeling  sure  there  would  not. 
He  tried  to  read  when  he  got  to  his  room ;  but 
Alma's  looks,  tones,  gestures,  whirred  through  and 
through  the  woof  of  the  story  like  shuttles ;  he 
could  not  keep  them  out,  and  he  fell  asleep  at  last, 
not  because  he  forgot  them,  but  because  he  forgave 
them.  He  was  able  to  say  to  himself  that  he  had 
been  justly  cut  off  from  kindness  which  he  knew 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        177 

how  to  value  in  losing  it.  He  did  not  expect  ever 
to  right  himself  in  Alma's  esteem ;  but  he  hoped 
some  day  to  let  her  know  that  he  had  understood. 
It  seemed  to  him  that  it  would  be  a  good  thing 
if  she  should  find  it  out  after  his  death.  He  ima- 
gined her  being  touched  by  it  under  those  circum- 
stances. 
8* 


VI. 


IN  the  morning  it  seemed  to  Beaton  that  he  had 
done  himself  injustice.  "When  he  uncovered  his 
Judas  and  looked  at  it,  he  could  not  believe  that 
the  man  who  was  capable  of  such  work  deserved  the 
punishment  Miss  Leighton  had  inflicted  upon  him. 
He  still  forgave  her,  but  in  the  presence  of  a  thing 
like  that  he  could  not  help  respecting  himself ;  he 
believed  that  if  she  could  see  it  she  would  be  sorry 
that  she  had  cut  herself  off  from  his  acquaintance. 
He  carried  this  strain  of  conviction  all  through  his 
syndicate  letter,  which  he  now  took  out  of  his  desk 
and  finished,  with  an  increasing  security  of  his 
opinions  and  a  mounting  severity  in  his  judgments. 
He  retaliated  upon  the  general  condition  of  art 
among  us  the  pangs  of  wounded  vanity,  which  Alma 
had. made  him  feel,  and  he  folded  up  his  manuscript 
and  put  it  in  his  pocket,  almost  healed  of  his  humi- 
liation. He  had  been  able  to  escape  from  its  sting 
so  entirely  while  he  was  writing  that  the  notion  of 
making  his  life  more  and  more  literary  commended 
itself  to  him.  As  it  was  now  evident  that  the 
future  was  to  be  one  of  renunciation,  of  self-forget- 
ting, an  oblivion  tinged  with  bitterness,  he  formlesslj 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  179 

reasoned  in  favour  of  reconsidering  his  resolution 
against  Fulkerson's  offer.  One  must  call  it  reason- 
ing, but  it  was  rather  that  swift  internal  dramatisa- 
tion which  constantly  goes  on  in  persons  of  excitable 
sensibilities,  and  which  now  seemed  to  sweep 
Beaton  physically  along  toward  the  Every  Other 
Week  office,  and  carried  his  mind  with  lightning 
celerity  on  to  a  time  when  he  should  have  given 
that  journal  such  quality  and  authority  in  matters 
of  art  as  had  never  been  enjoyed  by  any  in  America 
before.  With  the  prosperity  which  he  made  attend 
his  work  he  changed  the  character  of  the  enterprise, 
and  with  Fulkerson's  enthusiastic  support  he  gave 
the  public  an  art  journal  of  as  high  grade  as  Les 
Lettres  et  les  Arts,  and  very  much  that  sort  of  thing. 
All  this  involved  now  the  unavailing  regret  of  Alma 
Leighton,  and  now  his  reconciliation  with  her  :  they 
were  married  in  Grace  Church,  because  Beaton  had 
once  seen  a  marriage  there,  and  had  intended  to 
paint  a  picture  of  it  some  time. 

Nothing  in  these  fervid  fantasies  prevented  his 
responding  with  due  dryness  to  Fulkerson's  cheery 
"  Hello,  old  man ! "  when  he  found  himself  in  the 
building  fitted  up  for  the  Every  Other  Week  office. 
Fulkerson's  room  was  back  of  the  smaller  one 
occupied  by  the  book-keeper ;  they  had  been  respec- 
tively the  reception-room  and  dining-room  of  the 
little  place  in  its  dwelling-house  days,  and  they  had 
been  simply  and  tastefully  treated  in  their  trans- 
formation into  business  purposes.  The  narrow  old 
trim  of  the  doors  and  windows  had  been  kept,  and 
N 


180       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

the  quaintly  ugly  marble  mantels.  The  architect 
had  said,  Better  let  them  stay :  they  expressed 
epoch,  if  not  character. 

"  Well,  have  you  come  round  to  go  to  work  ?  Just 
hang  up  your  coat  on  the  floor  anywhere,"  Fulkerson 
went  on. 

"  I  Ve  come  to  bring  you  that  letter,"  said  Beaton, 
all  the  more  haughtily  because  he  found  that 
Fulkerson  was  not  alone  when  he  welcomed  him  in 
these  free  and  easy  terms.  There  was  a  quiet-look- 
ing man,  rather  stout,  and  a  little  above  the  middle 
height,  with  a  full,  close-cropped  iron-grey  beard, 
seated  beyond  the  table  where  Fulkerson  tilted  him- 
self back,  with  his  knees  set  against  it ;  and  leaning 
against  the  mantel  there  was  a  young  man  with  a 
singularly  gentle  face,  in  which  the  look  of  goodness 
qualified  and  transfigured  a  certain  simplicity.  His 
large  blue  eyes  were  somewhat  prominent ;  and  his 
rather  narrow  face  was  drawn  forward  in  a  nose  a 
little  too  long  perhaps,  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  full 
chin  deeply  cut  below  the  lip,  and  jutting  firmly 
forward. 

"Introduce  you  to  Mr.  March,  our  editor,  Mr. 
Beaton,"  Fulkerson  said,  rolling  his  head  in  the 
direction  of  the  elder  man ;  and  then  nodding  it 
toward  the  younger,  he  said,  "  Mr.  Dryfoos,  Mr. 
Beaton."  Beaton  shook  hands  with  March,  and 
then  with  Mr.  Dryfoos,  and  Fulkerson  went  on 
gaily :  "  We  were  just  talking  of  you,  Beaton — 
well,  you  know  the  old  saying.  Mr.  March,  as  I 
told  you,  is  our  editor,  and  Mr.  Dryfoos  has  charge 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  181 

of  the  publishing  department — he's  the  counting- 
room  incarnate,  the  source  of  power,  the  fountain  of 
corruption,  the  element  that  prevents  journalism 
being  the  high  and  holy  thing  that  it  would  be  if 
there  were  no  money  in  it."  Mr.  Dryfoos  turned 
his  large  mild  eyes  upon  Beaton,  and  laughed  with 
the  uneasy  concession  which  people  make  to  a 
character  when  they  do  not  quite  approve  of  the 
character's  language.  "  What  Mr.  March  and  I  are 
trying  to  do  is  to  carry  on  this  thing  so  that  there 
won't  be  any  money  in  it — or  very  little  ;  and  we  're 
planning  to  give  the  public  a  better  article  for  the 
price  than  it 's  ever  had  before.  Now  here 's  a 
dummy  we've  had  made  up  for  Every  Other  Week, 
and  as  we  've  decided  to  adopt  it,  we  would  naturally 
like  your  opinion  of  it,  so 's  to  know  what  opinion 
to  have  of  you."  He  reached  forward  and  pushed 
toward  Beaton  a  volume  a  little  above  the  size  of  the 
ordinary  duodecimo  book;  its  ivory  white  pebbled 
paper  cover  was  prettily  illustrated  with  a  water- 
coloured  design  irregularly  washed  over  the  greater 
part  of  its  surface  :  quite  across  the  page  at  top,  and 
narrowing  from  right  to  left  as  it  descended.  In  the 
triangular  space  left  blank  the  title  of  the  periodical 
and  the  publisher's  imprint  were  tastefully  lettered 
so  as  to  be  partly  covered  by  the  background  of 
colour. 

"  It 's  like  some  of  those  Tartarin  books  of  Dau- 
det's,"  said  Beaton,  looking  at  it  with  more  interest 
than  he  suffered  to  be  seen.  "But  it's  a  book,  not 
a  magazine."  He  opened  its  pages  of  thick  mellow 


182  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

white  paper,  with  uncut  leaves,  the  first  few  pages 
experimentally  printed  in  the  type  intended  to  be 
used,  and  illustrated  with  some  sketches  drawn  into 
and  over  the  text,  for  the  sake  of  the  effect. 

"  A  Daniel — a  Daniel  come  to  judgment !  Sit 
down,  Dan'el,  and  take  it  easy."  Fulkerson  pushed  a 
chair  toward  Beaton,  who  dropped  into  it.  "  You  're 
right,  Dan'el ;  it 's  a  book,  to  all  practical  intents 
and  purposes.  And  what  we  propose  to  do  with  the 
American  public  is  to  give  it  twenty-four  books  like 
this  a  year — a  complete  library — for  the  absurd  sum 
of  six  dollars.  We  don't  intend  to  sell  'em — it 's  no 
name  for  the  transaction — but  to  give  Jem.  And 
what  we  want  to  get  out  of  you — beg,  borrow,  buy, 
or  steal  from  you — is  an  opinion  whether  we  shall 
make  the  American  public  this  princely  present  in 
paper  covers  like  this,  or  in  some  sort  of  flexible 
boards,  so  they  can  set  them  on  the  shelf  and  say  no 
more  about  it.  Now,  Dan'el,  come  to  judgment,  as 
our  respected  friend  -Shylock  remarked." 

Beaton  had  got  done  looking  at  the  dummy,  and 
he  dropped  it  on  the  table  before  Fulkerson,  who 
pushed  it  away,  apparently  to  free  himself  from 
partiality.  "  I  don't  know  anything  about  the 
business  side,  and  I  can't  tell  about  the  effect  of 
either  style  on  the  sales ;  but  you  '11  spoil  the  whole 
character  of  the  cover  if  you  use  anything  thicker 
than  that  thickish  paper." 

"  All  right ;  very  good ;  first-rate.  The  ayes  have 
it.  Paper  it  is.  I  don't  mind  telling  you  that  we 
had  decided  for  that  paper  before  you  came  in.  Mr. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        183 

March  wanted  it,  because  he  felt  in  his  bones  just 
the  way  you  do  about  it,  and  Mr.  Dryfoos  wanted 
it,  because  he 's  the  counting-room  incarnate,  and 
it's  cheaper;  and  I  wanted  it,  because  I  always  like 
to  go  with  the  majority.  Now  what  do  you  think 
of  that  little  design  itself  ? " 

"  The  sketch  1 "  Beaton  pulled  the  book  toward 
him  again  and  looked  at  it  again.  "  Rather  decora- 
tive. Drawing 's  not  remarkable.  Graceful ;  rather 
nice."  He  pushed  the  book  away  again,  and  Fulker- 
son  pulled  it  to  his  side  of  the  table. 

"  Well,  that 's  a  piece  of  that  amateur  trash  you 
despise  so  much.  I  went  to  a  painter  I  know — by 
the  way,  he  was  guilty  of  suggesting  you  for  this 
thing,  but  I  told  him  I  was  ahead  of  him — and  I 
got  him  to  submit  my  idea  to  one  of  his  class,  and 
that's  the  result.  Well,  now,  there  ain't  anything 
in  this  world  that  sells  a  book  like  a  pretty  cover, 
and  we  're  going  to  have  a  pretty  cover  for  Every 
Other  Week  every  time.  We  've  cut  loose  from  the 
old  traditional  quarto  literary  newspaper  size,  and 
we've  cut  loose  from  the  old  two-column  big  page 
magazine  size ;  we  're  going  to  have  a  duodecimo 
page,  clear  black  print,  and  paper  that'll  make  your 
mouth  water;  and  we're  going  to  have  a  fresh 
illustration  for  the  cover  of  each  number,  and  we 
ain't  a-going  to  give  the  public  any  rest  at  all. 
Sometimes  we're  going  to  have  a  delicate  little 
landscape  like  this,  and  sometimes  we're  going  to 
have  an  indelicate  little  figure,  or  as  much  so  as  the 
law  will  allow." 


184  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

The  young  man  leaning  against  the  mantelpiece 
blushed  a  sort  of  protest. 

March  smiled  and  said  dryly,  "Those  are  the 
numbers  that  Mr.  Fulkerson  is  going  to  edit  himself." 

"Exactly.  And  Mr.  Beaton  here  is  going  to 
supply  the  floating  females,  gracefully  airing  them- 
selves against  a  sunset  or  something  of  that  kind." 
Beaton  frowned  in  embarrassment,  while  Fulkerson 
went  on  philosophically.  "It's  astonishing  how 
you  fellows  can  keep  it  up  at  this  stage  of  the  pro- 
ceedings ;  you  can  paint  things  that  your  harshest 
critic  would  be  ashamed  to  describe  accurately; 
you're  as  free  as  the  theatre.  But  that's  neither 
here  nor  there.  What  I'm  after  is  the  fact  that 
we  're  going  to  have  variety  in  our  title-pages,  and 
we  are  going  to  have  novelty  in  the  illustrations  of 
the  body  of  the  book.  March,  here,  if  he  had  his 
own  way,  wouldn't  have  any  illustrations  at  all." 

"Not  because  I  don't  like  them,  Mr.  Beaton," 
March  interposed,  "  but  because  I  like  them  too  much. 
I  find  that  I  look  at  the  pictures  in  an  illustrated 
article,  but  I  don't  read  the  article  very  much,  and  I 
fancy  that 's  the  case  with  most  other  people.  You've 
got  to  doing  them  so  prettily  that  you  take  our  eyes 
off  the  literature,  if  you  don't  take  our  minds  off." 

"  Like  the  society  beauties  on  the  stage :  people 
go  in  for  the  beauty  so  much  that  they  don't  know 
what  the  play  is.  But  the  box  office  gets  there  all 
the  same,  and  that's  what  Mr.  Dryfoos  wants." 
Fulkerson  looked  up  gaily  at  Mr.  Dryfoos,  who 
smiled  deprecatingly. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  185 

"It  was  different,"  March  went  on,  "when  the 
illustrations  used  to  be  bad.  Then  the  text  had 
some  chance." 

"Old  legitimate  drama  days,  when  ugliness  and 
genius  combined  to  storm  the  galleries,"  said  Ful- 
kerson. 

"  We  can  still  make  them  bad  enough,"  said 
Beaton,  ignoring  Fulkerson  in  his  remark  to  March. 

Fulkerson  took  the  reply  upon  himself.  "  Well, 
you  needn't  make  'em  so  bad  as  the  old-style  cuts ; 
but  you  can  make  them  unobtrusive,  modestly  re- 
tiring. We  Ve  got  hold  of  a  process  something  like 
that  those  French  fellows  gave  Daudet  thirty-five 
thousand  dollars  to  write  a  novel  to  use  with ;  kind 
of  thing  that  begins  at  one  side,  or  one  corner,  and 
spreads  in  a  sort  of  dim  religious  style  over  the 
print  till  you  can't  tell  which  is  which.  Then  we  Ve 
got  a  notion  that  where  the  pictures  don't  behave 
quite  so  sociably,  they  can  be  dropped  into  the  text, 
like  a  little  casual  remark,  don't  you  know,  or  a 
comment  that  has  some  connection,  or  may  be  none 
at  all,  with  what's  going  on  in  the  story.  Some- 
thing like  this."  Fulkerson  took  away  one  knee 
from  the  table  long  enough  to  open  the  drawer,  and 
pull  from  it  a  book  that  he  shoved  toward  Beaton. 
"  That 's  a  Spanish  book  I  happened  to  see  at  Bren- 
tano's,  and  I  froze  to  it  on  account  of  the  pictures. 
I  guess  they  're  pretty  good." 

"  Do  you  expect  to  get  such  drawings  in  this 
country  ?  "  asked  Beaton,  after  a  glance  at  the  book. 
"  Such  character — such  drama  ?  You  won't" 


186  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

""Well,  I'm  not  so  sure,"  said  Fulkerson,  "come 
to  get  our  amateurs  warmed  up  to  the  work.  But- 
what  I  want  is  to  get  the  physical  effect,  so  to  speak 
— get  that-sized  picture  into  our  page,  and  set  the 
fashion  of  it.  I  shouldn't  care  if  the  illustration 
was  sometimes  confined  to  an  initial  letter  and  a 
tail-piece." 

"  Couldn't  be  done  here.  We  haven't  the  touch. 
We  're  good  in  some  things,  but  this  isn't  in  our 
way,"  said  Beaton  stubbornly.  "  I  can't  think  of  a 
man  who  could  do  it ;  that  is,  amongst  those  that 
would." 

"  Well,  think  of  some  woman,  then,"  said  Fulker- 
son easily.  "I've  got  a  notion  that  the  women 
could  help  us  out  on  this  thing,  come  to  get  'em 
interested.  There  ain't  anything  so  popular  as. 
female  fiction ;  why  not  try  female  art  1 " 

"  The  females  themselves  have  been  supposed  to 
have  been  trying  it  for  a  good  while,"  March  sug- 
gested ;  and  Mr.  Dryf  oos  laughed  nervously  ;  Beaton 
remained  solemnly  silent. 

"Yes,  I  know,"  Fulkerson  assented.  "But  I 
don't  mean  that  kind  exactly.  What  we  want  to 
do  is  to  work  the  ewig  WeiUiche  in  this  concern. 
We  want  to  make  a  magazine  that  will  go  for  the 
women's  fancy  every  time.  I  don't  mean  with 
recipes  for  cooking  and  fashions  and  personal  gossip 
about  authors  and  society,  but  real  high-tone  litera- 
ture that  will  show  women  triumphing  in  all  the 
stories,  or  else  suffering  tremendously.  We  've  got 
to  recognise  that  women  form  three-fourths  of  the 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  1*87 

reading  public  in  this  country,  and  go  for  their 
tastes  and  ttyeir  sensibilities  and  their  sex-piety 
along  the  whole  line.  They  do  like  to  think  that 
women  can  do  things  better  than  men ;  and  if  we 
can  let  it  leak  out  and  get  around  in  the  papers  that 
the  managers  of  Every  Other  Week  couldn't  stir  a  peg 
in  the  line  of  the  illustration  they  wanted  till  they 
got  a  lot  of  God-gifted  girls  to  help  them,  it  '11  make 
the  fortunes  of  the  thing.  See  1 " 

He  looked  sunnily  round  at  the  other  men,  and 
March  said :  "  You  ought  to  be  in  charge  of  a 
Siamese  white  elephant,  Fulkerson.  It 's  a  disgrace 
to  be  connected  with  you." 

"  It  seems  to  me,"  said  Beaton,  "  that  you  'd  better 
get  a  God-gifted  girl  for  your  art  editor." 

Fulkerson  leaned  alertly  forward,  and  touched 
him  on  the  shoulder,  with  a  compassionate  smile. 
"My  dear  boy,  they  haven't  got  the  genius  of 
organisation.  It  takes  a  very  masculine  man  for 
that — a  man  who  combines  the  most  subtle  and 
refined  sympathies  with  the  most  forceful  purposes 
and  the  most  ferruginous  will  power.  Which  his 
name  is  Angus  Beaton,  and  here  he  sets  ! " 

The  others  laughed  with  Fulkerson  at  his  gross 
burlesque  of  flattery,  and  Beaton  frowned  sheepishly. 
"  I  suppose  you  understand  this  man's  style,"  he 
growled  toward  March. 

"  They  do,  my  son,"  said  Fulkerson.  "  They 
know  that  I  cannot  tell  a  lie."  He  pulled  out  his 
watch,  and  then  got  suddenly  upon  his  feet. 

"  It 's  quarter  of  twelve,  and  I  've  got  an  appoint- 


188  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

ment.  Beaton  rose  too,  and  Fulkerson  put  the 
two  books  in  his  lax  hands.  "  Take  these  along, 
Michelangelo  Da  Vinci,  my  friend,  and  put  your 
multitudinous  mind  on  them  for  about  an  hour, 
and  let  us  hear  from  you  to-morrow.  We  hang 
upon  your  decision." 

"  There 's  no  deciding  to  be  done,"  said  Beaton. 
"You  can't  combine  the  two  styles.  They'd  kill 
each  other." 

"  A  Dan'el,  a  Dan'el  come  to  judgment !  I  knew 
you  could  help  us  out !  Take  'em  along,  and  tell  us 
which  will  go  the  furthest  with  the  ewig  Weibliche. 
Dryfoos,  I  want  a  word  with  you."  He  led  the  way 
into  the  front  room,  flirting  an  airy  farewell  to 
Beaton  with  his  hand  as  he  went. 


VII. 

MARCH  and  Beaton  remained  alone  together  for  a 
moment,  and  March  said  :  "  I  hope  you  will  think 
it  worth  while  to  take  hold  with  us,  Mr.  Beaton. 
Mr.  Fulkerson  puts  it  in  his  own  way,  of  course ; 
but  we  really  want  to  make  a  nice  thing  of  the 
magazine."  He  had  that  timidity  of  the  elder  in 
the  presence  of  the  younger  man  which  the  younger, 
preoccupied  with  his  own  timidity  in  the  presence  of 
the  elder,  cannot  imagine.  Besides,  March  was  aware 
of  the  gulf  that  divided  him  as  a  literary  man  from 
Beaton  as  an  artist,  and  he  only  ventured  to  feel  his 
way  toward  sympathy  with  him.  "  We  want  to 
make  it  good ;  we  want  to  make  it  high.  Fulker- 
son is  right  about  aiming  to  please  the  women,  bub 
of  course  he  caricatures  the  way  of  going  about  it." 

For  answer,  Beaton  flung  out,  "  I  can't  go  in  for 
a  thing  I  don't  understand  the  plan  of." 

March  took  it  for  granted  that  he  had  wounded 
some  exposed  sensibility  of  Beaton's.  He  continued 
still  more  deferentially  :  "  Mr.  Fulkerson's  notion — • 
I  must  say  the  notion  is  his,  evolved  from  his  syndi- 
cate experience — is  that  we  shall  do  best  in  fiction 
to  confine  ourselves  to  short  stories,  and  make  each 


190       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

number  complete  in  itself.  He  found  that  the  most 
successful  things  he  could  furnish  his  newspapers 
were  short  stories ;  we  Americans  are  supposed  to 
excel  in  writing  them  ;  and  most  people  begin  with 
them  in  fiction  ;  and  it 's  Mr.  Fulkerson's  idea  to 
work  unknown  talent,  as  he  says,  and  so  he  thinks 
he  can  not  only  get  them  easih',  but  can  gradually 
form  a  school  of  short-story  writers.  I  can't  say  I 
follow  him  altogether,  but  I  respect  his  experience. 
We  shall  not  despise  translations  of  short  stories, 
but  otherwise  the  matter  will  all  be  original,  and  of 
course  it  won't  all  be  short  stories.  We  shall  use 
sketches  of  travel,  and  essays,  and  little  dramatic 
studies,  and  bits  of  biography  and  history  ;  but  all 
very  light,  and  always  short  enough  to  be  completed 
in  a  single  number.  Mr.  Fulkerson  believes  in  pic- 
tures, and  most  of  the  things  would  be  capable  of 
illustration." 

"  I  see,"  said  Beaton. 

"  I  don't  know  but  this  is  the  whole  affair,"  said 
March,  beginning  to  stiffen  a  little  at  the  young 
man's  reticence. 

"  I  understand.  Thank  you  for  taking  the  trouble 
to  explain.  Good  morning."  Beaton  bowed  him- 
self off,  without  offering  to  shake  hands. 

Fulkerson  came  in  after  a  while  from  the  outer 
office,  and  Mr.  Dryfoos  followed  him.  fi  Well,  what 
do  you  think  of  our  art  editor  ? " 

"  Is  he  our  art  editor  ? "  asked  March.  "  I  wasn't 
quite  certain  when  he  left." 

"  Did  he  take  the  books  ?  " 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       191 

"  Yes,  he  took  the  books." 

"  I  guess  he  's  all  right,  then."  Fulkerson  added, 
in  concession  to  the  umbrage  he  detected  in  March, 
"  Beaton  has  his  times  of  being  the  greatest  ass  in 
the  solar  system,  but  he  usually  takes  it  out  in  per- 
sonal conduct.  When  it  comes  to  work,  he's  a 
regular  horse." 

"  He  appears  to  have  compromised  for  the  present 
by  being  a  perfect  mule,"  said  March. 

"  Well,  he 's  in  a  transition  state,"  Fulkerson 
allowed.  "  He  's  the  man  for  us.  He  really  under- 
stands what  we  want.  You  '11  see  ;  he  '11  catch  on. 
That  lurid  glare  of  his  will  wear  off  in  the  course  of 
time.  He 's  really  a  good  fellow  when  you  take  him 
off  his  guard  ;  and  he 's  full  of  ideas.  He 's  spread 
out  over  a  good  deal  of  ground  at  present,  and  so  he  's 
pretty  thin ;  but  come  to  gather  him  up  into  a  lump, 
there 's  a  good  deal  of  substance  to  him.  Yes,  there 
is.  He 's  a  first-rate  critic,  and  he  's  a  nice  fellow 
with  the  other  artists.  They  laugh  at  his  univer- 
sality, but  they  all  like  him.  He 's  the  best  kind  of 
a  teacher  when  he  condescends  to  it ;  and  he 's  just 
the  man  to  deal  with  our  volunteer  work.  Yes,  sir, 
he's  a  prize.  Well,  I  must  go  now." 

Fulkerson  went  out  of  the  street  door  and  then 
came  quickly  back.  "By-the-by,  March,  I  saw  that 
old  dynamiter  of  yours  round  at  Beaton's  room 
yesterday." 

"  What  old  dynamiter  of  mine  ? " 

"  That  old  one-handed  Dutchman — friend  of  your 
youth — the  one  we  saw  at  Maroni's " 


192       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Oh — Lindau  !  "  said  March,  with  a  vague  pang 
of  self-reproach  for  having  thought  of  Lindau  so 
little  after  the  first  flood  of  his  tender  feeling  toward 
him  was  past 

"  Yes,  our  versatile  friend  was  modelling  him  as 
Judas  Iscariot.  Lindau  makes  a  first-rate  Judas, 
and  Beaton  has  got  a  big  thing  in  that  head  if  he 
works  the  religious  people  right.  But  what  I  was 
thinking  of  was  this — it  struck  me  just  as  I  was 
going  out  of  the  door  :  Didn't  you  tell  me  Lindau 
knew  forty  or  fifty  different  languages  1 " 

"  Four  or  five,  yes." 

"  Well,  we  won't  quarrel  about  the  number.  The 
question  is,  why  not  work  him  in  the  field  of  foreign 
literature  ?  You  can't  go  over  all  their  reviews  and 
magazines,  and  he  could  do  the  smelling  for  you,  if 
you  could  trust  his  nose.  Would  he  know  a  good 
thing?" 

"  I  think  he  would,"  said  March,  on  whom  the 
scope  of  Fulkerson's  suggestion  gradually  opened. 
"He  used  to  have  good  taste,  and  he  must  know 
the  ground.  Why,  it 's  a  capital  idea,  Fulkerson  ! 
Lindau  wrote  very  fair  English,  and  he  could  trans- 
late, with  a  little  revision." 

"And  he  would  probably  work  cheap.  Well, 
hadn't  you  better  see  him  about  it  ?  I  guess  it  '11 
be  quite  a  windfall  for  him." 

"  Yes,  it  will.  I  '11  look  him  up.  Thank  you  for 
the  suggestion,  Fulkerson." 

"  Oh,  don't  mention  it !  /don't  mind  doing  Every 
Other  Week  a  good,  turn  now  and  then  when  it  comes 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  193 

in  my  way."     Fulkerson  went  out  again,  and  this 
time  March  was  finally  left  with  Mr.  Dryfoos. 

"  Mrs.  March  was  very  sorry  not  to  be  at  home 
when  your  sisters  called  the  other  day.  She  wished 
me  to  ask  if  they  had  any  afternoon  in  particular. 
There  was  none  on  your  mother's  card." 

"  No,  sir,"  said  the  young  man,  with  a  flush  of 
embarrassment  that  seemed  habitual  with  him. 
"  She  has  no  day.  She 's  at  home  almost  every  day 
She  hardly  ever  goes  out." 

"  Might  we  come  some  evening  ? "  March  asked. 
"  We  should  be  very  glad  to  do  that,  if  she  would 
excuse  the  informality.  Then  I  could  come  with 
Mrs.  March." 

"  Mother  isn't  very  formal,"  said  the  young  man. 
"  She  would  be  very  glad  to  see  you." 

"Then  we'll  come  some  night  this  week,  if  you 
will  let  us.  "When  do  you  expect  your  father  back  ? " 

"Not  much  before  Christmas.  He's  trying  to 
settle  up  some  things  at  Moffitt." 

"  And  what  do  you  think  of  our  art  editor  ? "  asked 
March,  with  a  smile,  for  the  change  of  subject. 

"Oh,  I  don'J  know  much  about  such  things,"  said 
the  young  man,  with  another  of  his  embarrassed 
flushes.  "  Mr.  Tulkerson  seems  to  feel  sure  that  he 
is  the  one  for  us." 

"  Mr.  Fulkerson  seemed  to  think  that  /  was  the 
one  for  you,  too,"  said  March;  and  he  laughed. 
"  That 's  what  makes  me  doubt  his  infallibility.  But 
he  couldn't  do  worse  with  Mr.  Beaton." 

Mr.  Dryfoos  reddened  and  looked  down,  as  if 
VOL.  I.— 9 


194  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

unable  or  unwilling  to  cope  with  the  difficulty  of 
making  a  polite  protest  against  March's  self-de- 
preciation. He  said  after  a  moment:  "It's  new 
business  to  all  of  us  except  Mr.  Fulkerson.  But  I 
think  it  will  succeed.  I  think  we  can  do  some  good 
in  it." 

March  asked  rather  absently,  "  Some  good?"  Then 
he  added :  "  Oh  yes ;  I  think  we  can.  What  do 
you  mean  by  good  ?  Improve  the  public  taste  1 
Elevate  the  standard  of  literature  1  Give  young 
authors  and  artists  a  chance  1 " 

This  was  the  only  good  that  had  ever  been  in 
March's  mind,  except  the  good  that  was  to  come  in 
a  material  way  from  his  success,  to  himself  and  to 
his  family. 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  the  young  man  ;  and  he 
looked  down  in  a  shamefaced  fashion.  He  lifted  his 
,  head  and  looked  into  March's  face.  "  I  suppose  I 
was  thinking  that  some  time  we  might  help  along. 
If  we  were  to  have  those  sketches  of  yours  about  life 
in  every  part  of  New  York " 

March's  authorial  vanity  was  tickled.  "  Fulkerson 
has  been  talking  to  you  about  them  ?  He  seemed 
to  think  they  would  be  a  card.  He  believes  that 
there 's  no  subject  so  fascinating  to  the  general 
average  of  people  throughout  the  country  as  life  in 
New  York  City ;  and  he  liked  my  notion  of  doing 
these  things."  March  hoped  that  Dryfoos  would 
answer  that  Fulkerson  was  perfectly  enthusiastic 
about  his  notion ;  but  he  did  not  need  this  stimulus, 
and  at  any  rate  he  went  on  without  it.  "  The  fact 
is,  it 's  something  that  struck  my  fancy  the  moment 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        195 

I  came  here  ;  I  found  myself  intensely  interested  in 
the  place,  and  I  began  to  make  notes,  consciously 
and  unconsciously,  at  once.  Yes,  I  believe  I  can 
get  something  quite  attractive  out  of  it.  I  don't  in 
the  least  know  what  it  will  be  yet,  except  that  it 
will  be  very  desultory ;  and  I  couldn't  at  all  say 
when  I  can  get  at  it.  If  we  postpone  the  first 
number  till  February  I  might  get  a  little  paper  into 
that.  Yes,  I  think  it  might  be  a  good  thing  for  us," 
March  said,  with  modest  self-appreciation. 

"  If  you  can  make  the  comfortable  people  under- 
stand how  the  uncomfortable  people  live,  it  will  be 
a  very  good  thing,  Mr.  March.  Sometimes  it  seems 
to  me  that  the  only  trouble  is  that  we  don't  know 
one  another  well  enough ;  and  that  the  first  thing 
is  to  do  this."  The  young  fellow  spoke  with  the 
seriousness  in  which  the  beauty  of  his  face  resided. 
Whenever  he  laughed  his  face  looked  weak,  even 
silly.  It  seemed  to  be  a  sense  of  this  that  made 
him  hang  his  head  or  turn  it  away  at  such  times. 

"  That 's  true,"  said  March,  from  the  surface  only. 
"  And  then,  those  phases  of  low  life  are  immensely 
picturesque.  Of  course  we  must  try  to  get  the  con- 
trasts of  luxury  for  the  sake  of  the  full  effect.  That 
won't  be  so  easy.  You  can't  penetrate  to  the  dinner- 
party of  a  millionaire  under  the  wing  of  a  detective 
as  you  could  to  a  carouse  in  Mulberry  Street,  or  to 
his  children's  nursery  with  a  philanthropist'  as  you 
can  to  a  street-boy's  lodging-house."  March  laughed, 
and  again  the  young  man  turned  his  head  away. 
"  Still,  something  can  be  done  in  that  way  by  tact 

and  patience." 

0 


VIIL 

THAT  evening  March  went  with  his  wife  to  return 
the  call  of  the  Dryfoos  ladies.  On  their  way  up- 
town in  the  Elevated  he  told  her  of  his  talk  with 
young  Dryfoos.  "  I  confess  I  was  a  little  ashamed 
before  him  afterward  for  having  looked  at  the  matter 
so  entirely  from  the  aesthetic  point  of  view.  But  of 
course,  you  know,  if  I  went  to  work  at  those  things 
with  an  ethical  intention  explicitly  in  mind,  I  should 
spoil  them." 

"  Of  course,"  said  his  wife.  She  had  always  heard 
him  say  something  of  this  kind  about  such  things. 

He  went  on  :  "  But  I  suppose  that 's  just  the 
point  that  such  a  nature  as  young  Dryfoos'  can't  get 
hold  of,  or  keep  hold  of.  We  're  a  queer  lot,  down 
there,  Isabel — perfect  menagerie.  If  it  hadn't  been 
that  Fulkerson  got  us  together,  and  really  seems  to 
know  what  he  did  it  for,  I  should  say  he  was  the 
oddest  stick  among  us.  But  when  I  think  of  my- 
self and  my  own  crankiness  for  the  literary  depart- 
ment ;  'and  young  Dryfoos,  who  ought  really  to  be 
in  the  pulpit,  or  a  monastery,  or  something,  for  pub- 
lisher ;  and  that  young  Beaton,  who  probably  hasn't 
a  moral  fibre  in  his  composition,  for  the  art  man,  I 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       197 

don't  know  but  we  could  give  Fulkerson  odds  and 
still  beat  him  in  oddity." 

His  wife  heaved  a  deep  sigh  of  apprehension,  of 
renunciation,  of  monition.  "Well,  I'm  glad  you 
can  feel  so  light  about  it,  Basil." 

"  Light  ?  I  feel  gay  !  With  Fulkerson  at  the 
helm,  I  tell  you  the  rocks  and  the  lee  shore  had 
better  keep  out  of  the  way."  He  laughed  with 
pleasure  in  his  metaphor.  "Just  when  you  think 
Fulkerson  has  taken  leave  of  his  senses  he  says  or 
does  something  that  shows  he  is  on  the  most  inti- 
mate and  inalienable  terms  with  them  all  the  time. 
You  know  how  I've  been  worrying  over  those 
foreign  periodicals,  and  trying  to  get  some  transla- 
tion from  them  for  the  first  number  ?  Well,  Ful- 
kerson has  brought  his  centipedal  mind  to  bear  on 
the  subject,  and  he's  suggested  that  old  German 
friend  of  mine  I  was  telling  you  of — the  one  I  met 
in  the  restaurant — the  friend  of  my  youth." 

"  Do  you  think  he  could  do  it  ? "  asked  Mrs. 
March  sceptically. 

"  He 's  a  perfect  Babel  of  strange  tongues ;  and 
he 's  the  very  man  for  the  work,  and  I  was  ashamed 
I  hadn't  thought  of  him  myself,  for  I  suspect  he 
needs  the  work." 

"Well,  be  careful  how  you  get  mixed  up  with 
him,  then,  Basil,"  said  his  wife,  who  had  the  natural 
misgiving  concerning  the  friends  of  her  husband's 
youth  that  all  wives  have.  "You  know  the  Ger- 
mans are  so  unscrupulously  dependent.  You  don't 
know  anything  about  him  now." 


198       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  I  'm  not  afraid  of  Lindau,"  said  March.  "  He 
was  the  best  and  kindest  man  I  ever  saw,  the  most 
high-minded,  the  most  generous.  He  lost  a  hand  in 
the  war  that  helped  to  save  us  and  keep  us  possible, 
and  that  stump  of  his  is  character  enough  for  me." 

"  Oh,  you  don't  think  I  could  have  meant  any- 
thing against  him ! "  said  Mrs.  March,  with  the 
tender  fervour  that  every  woman  who  lived  in  the 
time  of  the  war  must  feel  for  those  who  suffered  in 
it.  "  All  that  I  meant  was  that  I  hoped  you  Avould 
not  get  mixed  up  with  him  too  much.  You're  so 
apt  to  be  carried  away  by  your  impulses." 

"  They  didn't  carry  me  very  far  away  in  the  direc- 
tion of  poor  old  Lindau,  I  'm  ashamed  to  think," 
said  March.  "  I  meant  all  sorts  of  fine  things  by 
him  after  I  met  him ;  and  then  I  forgot  him,  and  I 
had  to  be  reminded  of  him  by  Fulkerson." 

She  did  not  answer  him,  and  he  fell  into  a  re- 
morseful reverie,  in  which  he  rehabilitated  Lindau 
anew,  and  provided  handsomely  for  his  old  age.  He 
got  him  buried  with  military  honours,  and  had  a  shaft 
raised  over  him,  with  a  medallion  likeness  by  Beaton 
and  an  epitaph  by  himself,  by  the  time  they  reached 
Forty -second  Street ;  there  was  no  time  to  write 
Lindau's  life,  however  briefly,  before  the  train 
stopped. 

i  They  had  to  walk  up  four  blocks  and  then  half  a 
block  across  before  they  came  to  the  indistinctive 
brown-stone  house  where  the  Dryfooses  lived.  It 
was  larger  than  some  in  the  same  block,  but  the 
next  neighbourhood  of  a  huge  apartment-house 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  199 

dwarfed  it  again.  March  thought  he  recognised  the 
very  flat  in  which  he  had  disciplined  the  surly 
janitor,  but  he  did  not  tell  his  wife;  he  made  her 
notice  the  transition  character  of  the  street,  which 
had  been  mostly  built  up  in  apartment-houses,  with 
here  and  there  a  single  dwelling  dropped  far  down 
beneath  and  beside  them,  to  that  jag-toothed  effect 
on  the  sky-line  so  often  observable  in  such  New 
York  streets.  "  I  don't  know  exactly  what  the  old 
gentleman  bought  here  for,"  he  said,  as  they  waited 
on  the  steps  after  ringing,  "unless  he  expects  to 
turn  it  into  flats  by-and-by.  Otherwise,  I  don't 
believe  he  '11  get  his  money  back." 

An  Irish  serving-man,  with  a  certain  surprise  that 
delayed  him,  said  the  ladies  were  at  home,  and  let 
the  Marches  in,  and  then  carried  their  cards 
upstairs.  The  drawing-room,  where  he  said  they 
could  sit  down  while  he  went  on  this  errand,  was 
delicately  decorated  in  white  and  gold,  and  fur- 
nished with  a  sort  of  extravagant  good  taste  ;  there 
was  nothing  to  object  to  the  satin  furniture,  -the 
pale,  soft,  rich  carpet,  the  pictures,  and  the  bronze 
and  china  bric-a-brac,  except  that  their  costliness 
was  too  evident ;  everything  in  the  room  meant 
money  too  plainly,  and  too  much  of  it.  The 
Marches  recognised  this  in  the  hoarse  whispers 
which  people  cannot  get  their  voices  above  when 
they  try  to  talk  away  the  interval  of  waiting  in  such 
circumstances ;  they  conjectured  from  what  they 
had  heard  of  the  Dryfooses  that  this  tasteful  luxury 
in  nowise  expressed  ^  their  civilisation.  "  Though 


200       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

when  you  come  to  that,"  said  March,  "  I  don't  know 
that  Mrs.  Green's  gimcrackery  expresses  ours." 

"  Well,  Basil,  /  didn't  take  the  gimcrackery.  That 
was  your " 

The  rustle  of  skirts  on  the  stairs  without  arrested 
Mrs.  March  in  the  well-merited  punishment  which 
she  never  failed  to  inflict  upon  her  husband  when 
the  question  of  the  gimcrackery — they  always  called 
it  that — came  up.  She  rose  at  the  entrance  of 
a  bright-looking,  pretty-looking,  mature,  youngish 
lady,  in  black  silk  of  a  neutral  implication,  who  put 
out  her  hand  to  her,  and  said,  with  a  very  cheery, 
very  lady-like  accent,  "  Mrs.  March  ? "  and  then 
added  to  both  of  them,  while  she  shook  hands  with 
March,  and  before  they  could  get  the  name  out  of 
their  mouths,  "  No,  not  Miss  Dryfoos !  Neither  of 
them;  nor  Mrs.  Dryfoos.  Mrs.  MandeL  The 
ladies  will  be  down  in  a  moment  Won't  you 
throw  off  your  sacque,  Mrs.  March  ?  I  'm  afraid  it 's 
rather  warm  here,  coming  from  the  outside." 

"  I  will  throw  it  back,  if  you  '11  allow  me,"  said 
Mrs.  March,  with  a  sort  of  provisionally,  as  if, 
pending  some  uncertainty  as  to  Mrs.  Mandel's 
quality  and  authority,  she  did  not  feel  herself 
justified  in  going  further. 

But  if  she  did  not  know  about  Mrs.  Mandel,  Mrs. 
Mandel  seemed  to  know  about  her.  "  Oh,  well,  do  ! " 
she  said,  with  a  sort  of  recognition  of  the  propriety 
of  her  caution.  "  I  hope  you  are  feeling  a  little  at 
home  in  New  York  We  heard  so  much  of  your 
trouble  in  getting  a  flat,  from  Mr.  Fulkerson." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        201 

"  Well,  a  true  Bostonian  doesn't  give  up  quite  so 
soon,"  said  Mrs.  March.  "  But  I  will  say  New  York 
doesn't  seem  so  far  away,  now  we  're  here." 

"  I  'm  sure  you  '11  like  it.  Every  one  does." 
Mrs.  Mandel  added  to  March,  "  It 's  very  sharp  out, 
isn't  it  ? " 

"  Rather  sharp.  But  after  our  Boston  winters  I 
don't  know  but  I  ought  to  repudiate  the  word." 

"  Ah,  wait  till  you  have  been  here  through  March  !" 
said  Mrs.  Mandel.  She  began  with  him,  but  skil- 
fully transferred  the  close  of  her  remark,  and  the 
little  smile  of  menace  that  went  with  it,  to  his  wife. 

"  Yes,"  said  Mrs.  March,  "  or  April,  either.  Talk 
about  our  east  winds  !  " 

"  Oh,  I  'm  sure  they  can't  be  worse  than  our 
winds,*'  Mrs.  Mandel  returned  caressingly. 

"If  we  escape  New  York  pneumonia,"  March 
laughed,  "  it  will  only  be  to  fall  a  prey  to  New  York 
malaria  as  soon  as  the  frost  is  out  of  the  ground." 

"  Oh,  but  you  know,"  said  Mrs.  Mandel,  "  I  think 
our  malaria  has  really  been  slandered  a  little.  It 's 
more  a  matter  of  drainage — of  plumbing.  I  don't 
believe  it  would  be  possible  for  malaria  to  get  into 
this  house,  we  've  had  it  gone  over  so  thoroughly." 

Mrs.  March  said,  while  she  tried  to  divine  Mrs. 
Mandel's  position  from  this  statement,  "  It 's  certainly 
the  first  duty." 

"  If  Mrs.   March   could  have  had  her  way,  we 
should  have  had  the  drainage  of  our  whole  ward  put 
in  order,"  said  her  husband,  "before  we  ventured  to 
take  a  furnished  apartment  for  the  winter." 
9* 


202       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

Mrs.  Mandel  looked  discreetly  at  Mrs.  March  for 
permission  to  laugh  at  this,  but  at  the  same  moment 
both  ladies  became  preoccupied  with  a  second  rust- 
ling on  the  stairs. 

Two  tall,  well-dressed  young  girls  came  in,  and 
Mrs.  Mandel  introduced,  "Miss  Dryfoos,  Mrs.  March ; 
and  Miss  Mela  Dryfoos,  Mr.  March,"  she  added,  and 
the  girls  shook  hands  in  their  several  ways  with  the 
Marches. 

Miss  Dryfoos  had  keen  black  eyes,  and  her  hair 
was  intensely  black.  Her  face,  but  for  the  slight 
inward  curve  of  the  nose,  was  regular,  and  the  small- 
ness  of  her  nose  and  of  her  mouth  did  not  weaken 
her  face,  but  gave  it  a  curious  effect  of  fierceness,  of 
challenge.  She  had  a  large  black  fan  in  her  hand, 
which  she  waved  in  talking,  with  a  slow,  watchful 
nervousness.  Her  sister  was  blonde,  and  had  a  profile 
like  her  brother's ;  but  her  chin  was  not  so  salient, 
and  the  weak  look  of  the  mouth  was  not  corrected 
by  the  spirituality  or  the  fervour  of  his  eyes,  though 
hers  were  of  the  same  mottled  blue.  She  dropped 
into  the  low  seat  beside  Mrs.  Mandel,  and  inter- 
twined her  fingers  with  those  of  the  hand  which 
Mrs.  Mandel  let  her  have.  She  smiled  upon  the 
Marches,  while  Miss  Dryfoos  watched  them  in- 
tensely, with  her  eyes  first  on  one  and  then  on  the 
other,  as  if  she  did  not  mean  to  let  any  expression 
of  theirs  escape  her. 

"  My  mother  will  be  down  in  a  minute,"  she  said 
to  Mrs.  March. 

"  I  hope  we  're  not  disturbing  her.     It  is  so  good 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        203 

of  you  to  let  us  come  in  the  evening,"  Mrs.  March 
replied. 

"  Oh,  not  at  all,"  said  the  girl.  "  We  receive  in 
the  evening." 

"  When  we  do  rece'ive,"  Miss  Mela  put  in.  "  We 
don't  always  get  the  chance  to."  She  began  a  laugh, 
which  she  checked  at  a  smile  from  Mrs.  Mandel, 
which  no  one  could  have  seen  to  be  reproving. 

Miss  Dryfoos  looked  down  at  her  fan,  and  looked 
up  defiantly  at  Mrs.  March.  "  I  suppose  you  have 
hardly  got  settled.  We  were  afraid  we  would  dis- 
turb you  when  we  called." 

"  Oh  no  !  We  were  very  sorry  to  miss  your  visit. 
We  are  quite  settled  in  our  new  quarters.  Of  course, 
it's  all  very  different  from  Boston." 

"  I  hope  it 's  more  of  a  sociable  place  there,"  Miss 
Mela  broke  in  again.  "  I  never  saw  such  an  unsoci- 
able place  as  New  York.  We  Ve  been  in  this  house 
three  months,  and  I  don't  believe  that  if  we  stayed 
three  years  any  of  the  neighbours  would  call." 

"  I  fancy  proximity  doesn't  count  for  much  in 
New  York,"  March  suggested. 

Mrs.  Mandel  said  :  "  That's  what  I  tell  Miss  Mela. 
But  she  is  a  very  social  nature,  and  can't  reconcile 
herself  to  the  fact." 

"  No*  I  can't,"  the  girl  pouted.  "  I  think  it  was 
twice  as  much  fun  in  Moffitt.  I  wish  I  was  there 
now." 

"  Yes,"  said  March,  "  I  think  there  's  a  great  deal 
more  enjoyment  in  those  smaller  places.  There 's 
not  so  much  going  on  in  the  way  of  public  amuse- 


2(H  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

ments,  and  so  people  make  more  of  one  another. 
There  are  not  so  many  concerts,  theatres,  operas " 

"  Oh,  they  've  got  a  spendid  opera-house  in  Moffitt. 
It 's  just  grand,"  said  Miss  Mela. 

"  Have  you  been  to  the  opera  here,  this  winter  ?  " 
Mrs.  March  asked  of  the  elder  girl 

She  was  glaring  with  a  frown  at  her  sister,  and 
detached  her  eyes  from  her  with  an  effort.  "  What 
did  you  say  ? "  she  demanded,  with  an  absent  blunt- 
ness.  "  Oh  yes.  Yes  !  We  went  once.  Father 
took  a  box  at  the  Metropolitan." 

"  Then  you  got  a  good  dose  of  Wagner,  I  sup- 
pose ? "  said  March. 

"  What  ? "  asked  the  girl. 

"  I  don't  think  Miss  Dryfoos  is  very  fond  of 
Wagner's  music,"  Mrs.  Mandel  said.  "I  believe 
you  are  all  great  Wagnerites  in  Boston  ? " 

"  I  'm  a  very  bad  Bostonian,  Mrs.  Mandel.  I 
suspect  myself  of  preferring  Verdi,"  March  answered. 

Miss  Dryfoos  looked  down  at  her  fan  again,  and 
said,  "  I  like  Trovatore  the  best." 

"It's  an  opera  I  never  get  tired  of,"  said  March, 
and  Mrs.  March  and  Mrs.  Mandel  exchanged  a  smile 
of  compassion  for  his  simplicity.  He  detected  it, 
and  added,  "  But  I  dare  say  I  shall  come  down  with 
the  Wagner  feyer  in  time.  I've  been  exposed  to 
some  malignant  cases  of  it." 

"That  night  we  were  there,"  said  Miss  Mela, 
"they  had  to  turn  the  gas  down  all  through  one 
part  of  it,  and  the  papers  said  the  ladies  were  awful 
mad  because  they  couldn't  show  their  diamonds.  I 


L 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       205 

don't  wonder,  if  they  all  had  to  pay  as  much  for 
their  boxes  as  we  did.  We  had  to  pay  sixty  dollars." 
She  looked  at  the  Marches  for  their  sensation  at  this 
expense. 

March  said  :  "  Well,  I  think  I  shall  take  my  box 
by  the  month,  then.  It  must  come  cheaper,  whole- 
sale." 

"  Oh  no,  it  don't,"  said  the  girl,  glad  to  inform" 
him.  "  The  people  that  own  their  boxes,  and  that 
had  to  give  fifteen  or  twenty  thousand  dollars  apiece 
for  them,  have  to  pay  sixty  dollars  a  night  whenever 
there 's  a  performance,  whether  they  go  or  not." 
"  Then  I  should  go  every  night,"  March  said. 

"  Most  of  the  ladies  were  low  neck " 

March  interposed,  "  Well,  I  shouldn't  go  low  neck" 
The  girl  broke  into  a  fondly  approving  laugh  at 
his  drolling.  "  Oh,  I  guess  you  love  to  train  !  Us 
girls  wanted  to  go  low  neck,  too ;  but  father  said  we 
shouldn't,  and  mother  said  if  we  did  she  wouldn't 
come  to  the  front  of  the  box  once.  Well,  she  didn't, 
anyway.  We  might  just  as  well  'a'  gone  low  neck. 
She  stayed  back  the  whole  time,  and  when  they  had 
that  dance — the  ballet,  you  know — she  just  shut  her 
eyes.  Well,  Conrad  didn't  like  that  part  much, 
either ;  but  us  girls  and  Mrs.  Mandel,  we  brazened 
it  out  right  in  the  front  of  the  box.  We  were  about 
the  only  ones  there  that  went  high  neck.  Conrad 
had  to  wear  a  swallow-tail ;  but  father  hadn't  any, 
and  he  had  to  patch  out  with  a  white  cravat.  You 
couldn't  see  what  he  had  on  in  the  back  o'  the  box, 
anyway." 


206        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

Mrs.  March  looked  at  Miss  Dryfoos,  who  was 
waving  her  fan  more  and  more  slowly  up  and  down, 
and  who,  when  she  felt  herself  looked  at,  returned 
Mrs.  March's  smile,  which  she  meant  to  be  ingratiat- 
ing and  perhaps  sympathetic,  with  a  flash  that  made 
her  start,  and  then  ran  her  fierce  eyes  over  March's 
face.  "  Here  comes  mother,"  she  said,  with  a  sort 
of  breathlessness,  as  if  speaking  her  thought  aloud, 
and  through  the  open  door  the  Marches  could  see 
the  old  lady  on  the  stairs. 

She  paused  half-way  down,  and  turning,  called 
up  :  "  Coonrod  !  Coonrod  !  You  bring  my  shawl 
down  with  you." 

Her  daughter  Mela  called  out  to  her,  "  Now, 
mother,  Christine  '11  give  it  to  you  for  not  sending 
Mike." 

"Well,  I  don't  know  where  he  is,  Mely,  child," 
the  mother  answered  back.  "  He  ain't  never  around 
when  he 's  wanted,  and  when  he  ain't,  it  seems  like  a 
body  couldn't  git  shet  of  him,  nohow." 

"Well,  you  ought  to  ring  for  him,"  cried  Miss 
Mela,  enjoying  the  joke. 

Her  mother  came  in  with  a  slow  step ;  her  head 
shook  slightly  as  she  looked  about  the  room,  perhaps 
from  nervousness,  perhaps  from  a  touch  of  palsy. 
In  either  case  the  fact  had  a  pathos  which  Mrs. 
March  confessed  in  the  affection  with  which  she 
took  her  hard,  dry,  large,  old  hand  when  she  was 
introduced  to  her,  and  in  the  sincerity  which  she 
put  into  the  hope  that  she  was  well. 

"I'm  just  middlin',"  Mrs.  Dryfoos  replied.     "I 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  207 

ain't  never  so  well,  nowadays.  I  tell  fawther  I 
don't  believe  it  agrees  with  me  very  well  here ;  but 
he  says  1 11  git  used  to  it.  He 's  away  now,  out  at 
Moffitt,"  she  said  to  March,  and  wavered  on  foot  a 
moment  before  she  sank  into  a  chair.  She  was  a 
tall  woman,  who  had  been  a  beautiful  girl,  and  her 
grey  hair  had  a  memory  of  blondeness  in  it  like 
Lindau's,  March  noticed.  She  wore  a  simple  silk 
gown,  of  a  Quakerly  grey,  and  she  held  a  handker- 
chief folded  square,  as  it  had  come  from  the  laun- 
dress. Something  like  the  Sabbath  quiet  of  a  little 
wooden  meeting-house  in  thick  Western  woods  ex- 
pressed itself  to  him  from  her  presence. 

"  Laws,  mother  ! "  said  Miss  Mela  ;  "  what  you 
got  that  old  thing  on  for  ?  If  I  'd  'a'  known  you  'd 
V  come  down  in  that ! " 

"  Coonrod  said  it  was  all  right,  Mely,"  said  her 
mother. 

Miss  Mela  explained  to  the  Marches :  "  Mother 
was  raised  among  the  Dunkards,  and  she  thinks  it 's 
wicked  to  wear  anything  but  a  grey  silk  even  for 
dress  up." 

"  You  hain't  never  heared  o'  the  Dunkards,  I 
reckon,"  the  old  woman  said  to  Mrs.  March. 
"  Some  folks  calls  'em  the  Beardy  Men,  because 
they  don't  never  shave  ;  and  they  wash  feet  like 
they  do  in  the  Testament.  My  uncle  was  one.  He 
raised  me." 

"  I  guess  pretty  much  everybody  's  a  Beardy  Man 
nowadays,  if  he  ain't  a  Dunkard  ! " 

Miss  Mela  looked  round  for  applause  of  her  sally, 


208  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

but  March  was  saying  to  his  wife  :  "  It 's  a  Pennsyl- 
vania German  sect,  I  believe — something  like  the 
Quakers.  I  used  to  see  them  when  I  was  a  boy." 

"  Aren't  they  something  like  the  Mennists  1 " 
asked  Mrs.  MandeL 

"  They  're  good  people,"  said  the  old  woman, 
"  and  the  world  'd  be  a  heap  better  off  if  there 
was  more  like  'em." 

Her  son  came  in  and  laid  a  soft  shawl  over  her 
shoulders  before  he  shook  hands  with  the  visitors. 
"  I  am  glad  you  found  your  way  here,"  he  said  to 
them. 

Christine,  who  had  been  bending  forward  over 
her  fan,  now  lifted  herself  up  with  a  sigh  and  leaned 
back  in  her  chair. 

"  I  'm  sorry  my  father  isn't  here,"  said  the  young 
man  to  Mrs.  March.  "  He 's  never  met  you  yet  ?  " 

"  No  ;  and  I  should  like  to  see  him.  We  hear  a 
great  deal  about  your  father,  you  know,  from  Mr. 
Fulkerson." 

"Oh,  I  hope  you  don't  believe  everything  Mr. 
Fulkerson  says  about  people,"  Mela  cried.  "He's 
the  greatest  person  for  carrying  on  when  he  gets 
going  /  ever  saw.  It  makes  Christine  just  as  mad 
when  him  and  mother  get  to  talking  about  religion ; 
she  says  she  knows  he  don't  care  anything  more 
about  it  than  the  man  in  the  moon.  I  reckon  he 
don't  try  it  on  much  with  father." 

"  Your  fawther  ain't  ever  been  a  perfessor,"  her 
mother  interposed ;  "  but  he 's  always  been  a  good 
church-goin'  man." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  209 

"  Not  since  we  come  to  New  York,"  retorted  the 
girl. 

"  He 's  been  all  broke  up  since  he  come  to  New 
York,"  said  the  old  woman,  with  an  aggrieved  look. 

Mrs.  Mandel  attempted  a  diversion.  "  Have  you 
heard  any  of  our  great  New  York  preachers  yet, 
Mrs.  March  1 " 

"  No,  I  haven't,"  Mrs.  March  admitted ;  and  she 
tried  to  imply  by  her  candid  tone  that  she  intended 
to  begin  hearing  them  the  very  next  Sunday. 

"There  are  a  great  many  things  here,"  said 
Conrad,  "to  take  your  thoughts  off  the  preaching 
that  you  hear  in  most  of  the  churches.  I  think  the 
city  itself  is  preaching  the  best  sermon  all  the  time." 

"  I  don't  know  that  I  understand  you,"  said  March. 

Mela  answered  for  him.  "  Oh,  Conrad  has  got  a, 
lot  of  notions  that  nobody  can  understand.  You 
ought  to  see  the  church  he  goes  to  when  he  does  go. 
I  'd  about  as  lief  go  to  a  Catholic  church  myself ;  I 
don't  see  a  bit  o'  difference.  He's  the  greatest 
crony  with  one  of  their  preachers ;  he  dresses  just 
like  a  priest,  and  he  says  he  is  a  priest."  She 
laughed  for  enjoyment  of  the  fact,  and  her  brother 
cast  down  his  eyes. 

Mrs.  March,  in  her  turn,  tried  to  take  from  it  the 
personal  tone  which  the  talk  was  always  assuming. 
"Have  you  been  to  the  fall  exhibition  1"  she  asked 
Christine ;  and  the  girl  drew  herself  up  out  of  the 
abstraction  she  seemed  sunk  in. 

"  The  exhibition  1 "    She  looked  at  Mrs.  Mandel. 

"The  pictures  of  the  Academy,  you  know,"  Mrs. 


210  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

Mandel  explained.  "  Where  I  wanted  you  to  go  the 
day  you  had  your  dress  tried  on." 

"  Xo  ;  we  haven't  been  yet.  Is  it  good  ? "  She 
had  turned  to  Mrs.  March  again. 

"  I  believe  the  fall  exhibitions  are  never  so  good 
as  the  spring  ones.  But  there  are  some  good 
pictures." 

"  I  don't  believe  I  care  much  about  pictures,"  said 
Christine.  "I  don't  understand  them." 

"  Ah,  that 's  no  excuse  for  not  caring  about  them," 
said  March  lightly.  "  The  painters  themselves 
don't,  half  the  time." 

The  girl  looked  at  him  with  that  glance  at  once 
defiant  and  appealing,  insolent  and  anxious,  which 
he  had  noticed  before,  especially  when  she  stole  it 
toward  himself  and  his  wife  during  her  sister's 
babble.  In  the  light  of  Fulkerson's  history  of  the 
family,  its  origin  and  its  ambition,  he  interpreted 
it  to  mean  a  sense  of  her  sister's  folly  and  an 
ignorant  will  to  override  his  opinion  of  anything 
incongruous  in  themselves  and  their  surroundings. 
He  said  to  himself  that  she  was  deathly  proud — too 
proud  to  try  to  palliate  anything,  but  capable  of 
anything  that  would  put  others  under  her  feet.  Her 
eyes  seemed  hopelessly  to  question  his  wife's  social 
quality,  and  he  fancied,  with  not  unkindly  interest, 
the  inexperienced  girl's  doubt  whether  to  treat  them 
with  much  or  little  respect.  He  lost  himself  in 
fancies  about  her  and  her  ideals,  necessarily  sor- 
did, of  her  possibilities  of  suffering,  of  the  triumphs 
and  disappointments  before  her.  Her  sister  would 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        211 

accept  both  with  a  lightness  that  would  keep  no 
trace  of  either ;  but  in  her  they  would  sink  lastingly 
deep.  He  came  out  of  his  reverie  to  find  Mrs. 
Dryfoos  saying  to  him  in  her  hoarse  voice — 

"  I  think  it 's  a  shame,  some  of  the  pictur's  a  body 
sees  in  the  winders.  They  say  there  's  a  law  aginst 
them  things ;  and  if  there  is,  I  don't  understand 
why  the  police  don't  take  up  them  that  paints  'em. 
I  hear  tell,  since  I  been  here,  that  there 's  women 
that  goes  to  have  pictur's  took  from  them  that  way  by 
men  painters."  The  point  seemed  aimed  at  March, 
as  if  he  were  personally  responsible  for  the  scandal, 
and  it  fell  with  a  silencing  effect  for  the  moment. 
Nobody  seemed  willing  to  take  it  up,  and  Mrs. 
Dryfoos  went  on,  with  an  old  woman's  severity  :  "  I 
say  they  ought  to  be  all  tarred  and  feathered  and 
rode  on  a  rail.  They  'd  be  drummed  out  of  town  in 
Moffitt." 

Miss  Mela  said,  with  a  crowing  laugh  :  "  I  should 
think  they  would  !  And  they  wouldn't  anybody  go 
low  neck  to  the  opera-house  there,  either — not  low 
neck  the  way  they  do  here,  anyway." 

"  And  that  pack  of  worthless  hussies,"  her  mother 
resumed,  "  that  come  out  on  the  stage,  and  begun  to 
kick " 

"  Laws,  mother  ! "  the  girl  shouted,  "  I  thought 
you  said  you  had  your  eyes  shut ! " 

All  but  these  two  simpler  creatures  were  abashed 
at  the  indecorum  of  suggesting  in  words  the  com- 
mon-places of  the  theatre  and  of  art. 

"  Well,  I  did,  Mely,  as  soon  as  I  could  believe  my 
.f 


212  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

eyes.  I  don't  know  what  they  're  doin'  in  all  their 
churches,  to  let  such  things  go  on,"  said  the  old 
woman.  "  It 's  a  sin  and  a  shame,  /  think.  Don't 
•  you,  Coonrod  ? " 

A  ring  at  the  door  cut  short  whatever  answer  he 
•was  about  to  deliver. 

"  If  it 's  going  to  be  company,  Coonrod,"  said  his 
mother,  making  an  effort  to  rise,  "I  reckon  I  better 
go  upstairs." 

"It's  Mr.  Fulkerson,  I  guess,"  said  Conrad.  "He 
thought  he  might  come  ; "  and  at  the  mention  of 
this  light  spirit  Mrs.  Dryfoos  sank  contentedly  back 
in  her  chair,  and  a  relaxation  of  their  painful  ten- 
sion seemed  to  pass  through  the  whole  company. 
Conrad  went  to  the  door  himself  (the  serving-man 
tentatively  appeared  some  minutes  later)  and  let  in 
Fulkerson's  cheerful  voice  before  his  cheerful  person. 

"  Ah,  how  d'  ye  do,  Conrad  ?  Brought  our  friend, 
Mr.  Beaton,  with  me,"  those  within  heard  him  say ; 
and  then,  after  a  sound  of  putting  off  overcoats,  they 
saw  him  fill  the  doorway,  with  his  feet  set  square 
and  his  arms  akimbo. 


IX. 


"  AH  !  hello !  hello ! "  Fulkerson  said,  in  recognition 
of  the  Marches.  "  Regular  gathering  of  the  clans. 
How  are  you,  Mrs.  Dryfoos  ?  How  do  you  do,  Mrs. 
Mandel,  Miss  Christine,  Mela,  Aunt  Hitty,  and  all 
the  folks  ?  How  you  wuz  1 "  He  shook  hands 
gaily  all  round,  and  took  a  chair  next  the  old  lady, 
whose  hand  he  kept  in  his  own,  and  left  Conrad  to 
introduce  Beaton.  But  he  would  not  let  the  shadow 
of  Beaton's  solemnity  fall  upon  the  company.  He 
began  to  joke  with  Mrs.  Dryfoos,  and  to  match 
rheumatisms  with  her,  and  he  included  all  the 
ladies  in  the  range  of  appropriate  pleasantries. 
"I've  brought  Mr.  Beaton  along  to-night,  and  I 
want  you  to  make  him  feel  at  home,  like  you  do  me, 
Mrs.  Dryfoos.  He  hasn't  got  any  rheumatism  to 
speak  of ;  but  his  parents  live  in  Syracuse,  and  he 's 
a  kind  of  an  orphan,  and  we've  just  adopted  him 
down  at  the  office.  When  you  going  to  bring  the 
young  ladies  down  there,  Mrs.  Mandel,  for  a  cham- 
pagne lunch  ?  I  will  have  some  hydro-Mela,  and 
Christine  it,  heigh  1  How 's  that  for  a  little  starter  ? 
We  dropped  in  at  your  place  a  moment,  Mrs.  March, 
and  gave  the  young  folks  a  few  pointers  about  their 


214  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

studies.  My  goodness !  it  does  me  good  to  see  a 
boy  like  that  of  yours ;  business,  from  the  word  go ; 
and  your  girl  just  scoops  my  youthful  affections. 
She 's  a  beauty,  and  I  guess  she 's  good  too.  Well, 
well,  what  a  world  it  is  !  Miss  Christine,  won't  you 
show  Mr.  Beaton  that  seal  ring  of  yours  1  He 
knows  about  such  things,  and  I  brought  him  here 
to  see  it  as  much  as  anything.  It 's  an  intaglio  I 
brought  from  the  other  side,"  he  explained  to  Mrs. 
March,  "  and  I  guess  you  '11  like  to  look  at  it.  Tried 
to  give  it  to  the  Dryfoos  family,  and  when  I  couldn't, 
I  sold  it  to  'em.  Bound  to  see  it  on  Miss  Christine's 
hand  somehow !  Hold  on  !  Let  him  see  it  where 
it  belongs,  first ! " 

He  arrested  the  girl  in  the  motion  she  made  to 
take  off  the  ring,  and  let  her  have  the  pleasure  of 
showing  her  hand  to  the  company  with  the  ring  on 
it.  Then  he  left  her  to  hear  the  painter's  words 
about  it,  which  he  continued  to  deliver  dissyllabically 
as  he  stood  with  her  under  a  gas  jet,  twisting  his 
elastic  figure  and  bending  his  head  over  the  ring. 

"  Well,  Mely,  child,"  Fulkerson  went  on,  with  an 
open  travesty  of  her  mother's  habitual  address, 
"  and  how  are  you  getting  along  ?  Mrs.  Mandel 
hold  you  up  to  the  proprieties  pretty  strictly  ?  Well, 
that 's  right.  You  know  you  'd  be  roaming  all  over 
the  pasture  if  she  didn't." 

The  girl  gurgled  out  her  pleasure  in  his  funning, 
and  everybody  took  him  on  his  own  ground  of 
privileged  character.  He  brought  them  all  together 
in  their  friendliness  for  himself,  and  before  the 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       215 

evening  was  over  he  had  inspired  Mrs.  Mandel  to 
have  them  served  with  coffee,  and  had  made  both 
the  girls  feel  that  they  had  figured  brilliantly  in 
society,  and  that  two  young  men  had  been  devoted 
to  them. 

"  Oh,  I  think  he 's  just  as  lovely  as  he  can  live  ! " 
said  Mela,  as  she  stood  a  moment  with  her  sister 
on  the  scene  of  her  triumph,  where  the  others  had 
left  them  after  the  departure  of  their  guests. 

"  Who  1 "  asked  Christine  deeply.  As  she 
glanced  down  at  her  ring,  her  eyes  burned  with  a 
softened  fire.  She  had  allowed  Beaton  to  change 
it  himself  from  the  finger  where  she  had  worn  it  to 
the  finger  on  which  he  said  she  ought  to  wear  it. 
She  did  not  know  whether  it  was  right  to  let  him, 
but  she  was  glad  she  had  done  it. 

"  Who  ?  Mr.  Fulkerson,  goosie-poosie  !  Not 
that  old  stuck-up  Mr.  Beaton  of  yours  !  " 

"  He  is  proud,"  assented  Christine,  with  a  throb 
of  exultation. 

Beaton  and  Fulkerson  went  to  the  elevated 
station  with  the  Marches  ;  but  the  painter  said  he  was 
going  to  Avalk  home,  and  Fulkerson  let  him  go  alone. 

"  One  way  is  enough  for  me,"  he  explained. 
"  When  I  walk  up,  I  don't  walk  down.  By -by,  my 
son ! "  He  began  talking  about  Beaton  to  the 
Marches  as  they  climbed  the  station  stairs  together. 
"  That  fellow  puzzles  me.  I  don't  know  anybody 
that  I  have  such  a  desire  to  kick,  and  at  the  same 
time  that  I  want  to  flatter  up  so  much.  Affect  you 
that  way  1 "  he  asked  of  March. 


216  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Well,  as  far  as  the  kicking  goes,  yes." 

"  And  how  is  it  with  you,  Mrs.  March  1 " 

"  Oh,  I  want  to  flatter  him  up." 

"No;  really?  Why?— Hold  on!  I've  got  the 
change." 

Fulkerson  pushed  March  away  from  the  ticket- 
office  window,  and  made  them  his  guests,  with  the 
inexorable  American  hospitality,  for  the  ride  down- 
town. "  Three  ! "  he  said  to  the  ticket-seller ;  and 
when  he  had  walked  them  before  him  out  on  the 
platform  and  dropped  his  tickets  into  the  urn,  he 
persisted  in  his  inquiry,  "  Why  ? " 

"Why,  because  you  always  want  to  flatter  con- 
ceited people,  don't  you  ? "  Mrs.  March  answered, 
with  a  laugh. 

"Do  you?  Yes,  I  guess  you  do.  You  think 
Beaton  is  conceited  1 " 

"  Well,  slightly,  Mr.  Fulkerson." 

"I  guess  you're  partly  right,"  said  Fulkerson, 
with  a  sigh,  so  unaccountable  in  its  connection  that 
they  all  laughed. 

"  An  ideal  '  busted '  ? "  March  suggested. 

"  No,  not  that,  exactly,"  said  Fulkerson.  "  But  I  had 
a  notion  may  be  Beaton  wasn't  conceited  all  the  time." 

"  Oh  ! "  Mrs.  March  exulted,  "  nobody  could  be 
so  conceited  all  the  time  as  Mr.  Beaton  is  most  of 
the  time.  He  must  have  moments  of  the  direst 
modesty,  when  he  'd  be  quite  flattery-proof." 

"  Yes,  that 's  what  I  mean.  I  guess  that 's  what 
makes  me  want  to  kick  him.  He 's  left  compliments 
on  my  hands  that  no  decent  man  would." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  217 

"  Oh  !  that 's  tragical,"  said  March. 

"  Mr.  Fulkerson,"  Mrs.  March  began,  with  change 
of  subject  in  her  voice,  "  who  is  Mrs.  Mandel  ? " 

"  Who  1  What  do  you  think  of  her  ? "  he  re- 
joined. "  I  '11  tell  you  about  her  when  we  get  in  the 
cars.  Look  at  that  thing  !  Ain't  it  beautiful  1 " 

They  leaned  over  the  track,  and  looked  up  at 
the  next  station,  where  the  train,  just  starting, 
throbbed  out  the  flame-shot  steam  into  the  white 
moonlight. 

"The  most  beautiful  thing  in  New  York — the 
one  always  and  certainly  beautiful  thing  here," 
said  March;  and  his  wife  sighed,  "Yes,  yes."  She 
clung  to  him,  and  remained  rapt  by  the  sight  till 
the  train  drew  near,  and  then  pulled  him  back  in 
a  panic. 

"  Well,  there  ain't  really  much  to  tell  about  her," 
Fulkerson  resumed,  when  they  were  seated  in  the 
car.  "  She 's  an  invention  of  mine." 

"  Of  yours  ?  "  cried  Mrs.  March. 

"  Of  course  ! "  exclaimed  her  husband. 

"  Yes — at  least  in  her  present  capacity.  She  sent 
me  a  story  for  the  syndicate,  back  in  July  some 
time,  along  about  the  time  I  first  met  old  Dryfoos 
here.  It  was  a  little  too  long  for  my  purpose,  and  I 
thought  I  could  explain  better  how  I  wanted  it  cut 
in  a  call  than  I  could  in  a  letter.  She  gave  a 
Brooklyn  address,  and  I  went  to  see  her.  I  found 
her,"  said  Fulkerson,  with  a  vague  defiance,  "a 
perfect  lady.  She  was  living  with  an  aunt  over 
there ;  and  she  had  seen  better  days,  when  she  was 
VOL.  I.— 10 


218  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

a  girl,  and  worse  ones  afterward.  I  don't  mean  to 
say  her  husband  was  a  bad  fellow ;  I  guess  he  was 
pretty  good ;  he  was  her  music-teacher ;  she  met 
him  in  Germany,  and  they  got  married  there,  and 
got  through  her  property  before  they  came  over 
here.  Well,  she  didn't  strike  me  like  a  person  that 
could  make  much  headway  in  literature.  Her  story 
was  well  enough,  but  it  hadn't  much  sand  in  it; 
kind  of — well,  academic,  you  know.  I  told  her  so, 
and  she  understood,  and  cried  a  little ;  but  she  did 
the  best  she  could  with  the  thing,  and  I  took  it  and 
syndicated  it.  She  kind  of  stuck  in  my  mind,  and 
the  first  time  I  went  to  see  the  Dryfooses — they 
were  stopping  at  a  sort  of  family  hotel  then  till  they 
could  find  a  house "  Fulkerson  broke  off  alto- 
gether, and  said,  "I  don't  know  as  I  know  just  how 
the  Dryfooses  stnick  you,  Mrs.  March  1 " 

"  Can't  you  imagine  ? "  she  answered.  Avith  a 
kindly  smile. 

"Yes;  but  I  don't  believe  I  could  guess  how  they 
would  have  struck  you  last  summer  when  I  first  saw 
them.  My  !  oh  my  !  there  was  the  native  earth  for 
you.  Mely  is  a  pretty  wild  colt  now,  but  you 
ought  to  have  seen  her  before  she  was  broken  to 
harness.  And  Christine  1  Ever  see  that  black 
leopard  they  got  up  there  in  the  Central  Park  ? 
That  was  Christine.  Well,  I  saw  what  they  wanted. 
They  all  saw  it — nobody  is  a  fool  in  all  directions, 
and  the  Dryfooses  are  in  their  right  senses  a  good 
deal  of  the  time.  Well,  to  cut  a  long  story  short,  I 
got  Mrs.  Mandel  to  take  'em  in  hand — the  old  lady 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  219 

as  well  as  the  girls.  She  was  a  born  lady,  and 
always  lived  like  one  till  she  saw  Mandel ;  and  that 
something  academic  that  killed  her  for  a  writer  was 
just  the  very  thing  for  them.  She  knows  the  world 
well  enough  to  know  just  how  much  polish  they  can 
take  on,  and  she  don't  try  to  put  on  a  bit  more.  See  ? " 

"  Yes,  I  can  see,"  said  Mrs.  March. 

"  Well,  she  took  hold  at  once,  as  ready  as  a 
hospital-trained  nurse ;  and  there  ain't  anything 
readier  on  this  planet.  She  runs  the  whole  concern, 
socially  and  economically,  takes  all  the  care  of 
house-keeping  off  the  old  lady's  hands,  and  goes 
round  with  the  girls.  By-the-by,  I  'm  going  to  take 
my  meals  at  your  widow's,  March,  and  Conrad's 
going  to  have  his  lunch  there.  I  'in  sick  of  brows- 
ing about." 

"  Mr.  March's  widow  1 "  said  his  wife,  looking  at 
him  with  provisional  severity. 

"  I  have  no  widow,  Isabel,"  he  said,  "  and  never 
expect  to  have,  till  I  leave  you  in  the  enjoyment  of 
my  life  insurance.  I  suppose  Fulkerson  means  the 
lady  with  the  daughter,  who  wanted  to  take  us 
to  board." 

"  Oh  yes.  How  are  they  getting  on,  I  do 
wonder  1 "  Mrs.  March  asked  of  Fulkerson. 

"  Well,  they  've  got  one  family  to  board ;  but  it 's 
a  small  one.  I  guess  they  '11  pull  through.  They 
didn't  want  to  take  any  day  boarders  at  first,  the 
widow  said ;  I  guess  they  have  had  to  come  to  it." 

"  Poor  things  ! "  sighed  Mrs.  March.  "  I  hope 
they  '11  go  back  to  the  country." 


220       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Well,  I  don't  know.  When  you  've  once  tasted 

New  York You  wouldn't  go  back  to  Boston, 

would  you  ? " 

"Instantly." 

Fulkerson  laughed  out  a  tolerant  incredulity. 


BEATON  lit  his  pipe  when  he  found  himself  in  his 
room,  and  sat  down  before  the  dull  fire  in  his  grate 
to  think.  It  struck  him  there  was  a  dull  fire  in  his 
heart  a  great  deal  like  it,  and  he  worked  out  a 
fanciful  analogy  with  the  coals,  still  alive,  and  the 
ashes  creeping  over  them,  and  the  dead  clay  and 
cinders.  He  felt  sick  of  himself,  sick  of  his  life  and 
of  all  his  works.  He  was  angry  with  Fulkerson  for 
having  got  him  into  that  art  department  of  his,  for 
having  bought  him  up ;  and  he  was  bitter  at  fate 
because  he  had  been  obliged  to  use  the  money  to 
pay  some  pressing  debts,  and  had  not  been  able  to 
return  the  check  his  father  had  sent  him.  He  pitied 
his  poor  old  father ;  he  ached  with  compassion  for 
him ;  and  he  set  his  teeth  and  snarled  with  con- 
tempt through  them  for  his  own  baseness.  This 
was  the  kind  of  world  it  was  ;  but  he  washed  his 
hands  of  it.  The  fault  was  in  human  nature,  and 
he  reflected  with  pride  that  he  had  at  least  not  in- 
vented human  nature ;  he  had  not  sunk  so  low  as 
that  yet.  The  notion  amused  him ;  he  thought  he 
might  get  a  Satanic  epigram  out  of  it  some  way. 
But  in  the  meantime  that  girl,  that  wild  animal, 


222        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

she  kept  visibly,  tangibly  before  him ;  if  he  put  out 
his  hand  he  might  touch  hers,  he  might  pass  his  arm 
round  her  waist.  In  Paris,  in  a  set  he  knew  there, 
what  an  effect  she  would  be  with  that  look  of  hers, 
and  that  beauty,  all  out  of  drawing  !  They  would 
recognise  the  flame  quality  in  her.  He  imagined  a 
joke  about  her  being  a  fiery  spirit,  or  nymph,  naiad, 
whatever,  from  one  of  her  native  gas  wells.  He 
began  to  sketch  on  a  bit  of  paper  from  the  table  at 
his  elbow  vague  lines  that  veiled  and  revealed  a 
level,  dismal  landscape,  and  a  vast  flame  against  an 
empty  sky,  and  a  shape  out  of  the  flame  that  took 
on  a  likeness,  and  floated  detached  from  it.  The 
sketch  ran  up  the  left  side  of  the  sheet  and  stretched 
across  it.  Beaton  laughed  out.  Pretty  good  to  let 
Fulkerson  have  that  for  the  cover  of  his  first  number! 
In  black  and  red  it  would  be  effective ;  it  would 
catch  the  eye  from  the  news  stands.  He  made  a 
motion  to  throw  it  on  the  fire,  but  held  it  back,  and 
slid  it  into  the  table  drawer,  and  smoked  on.  He 
saw  the  dummy  with  the  other  sketch  in  the  open 
drawer,  which  he  had  brought  away  from  Fulker- 
son's  in  the  morning  and  slipped  in  there,  and  he 
took  it  out  and  looked  at  it.  He  made  some  criticisms 
in  line  with  his  pencil  on  it,  correcting  the  drawing 
here  and  there,  and  then  he  respected  it  a  little 
more,  though  he  still  smiled  at  the  feminine  quality 
'• — a  young  lady  quality. 

In  spite  of  his  experience  the  night  he  called  upon 
the  Leightons,  Beaton  could  not  believe  that  Alma 
no  longer  cared  for  him.  She  played  at  having 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        223 

forgotten  him  admirably,  but  he  knew  that  a  few 
months  before  she  had  been  very  mindful  of  him. 
He  knew  he  had  neglected  them  since  they  came  to 
New  York,  where  he  had  led  them  to  expect  interest, 
if  not  attention ;  but  he  was  used  to  neglecting 
people,  and  he  was  somewhat  less  used  to  being 
punished  for  it — punished  and  forgiven.  He  felt 
that  Alma  had  punished  him  so  thoroughly  that  she 
ought  to  have  been  satisfied  with  her  work  and  to 
have  forgiven  him  in  her  heart  afterward.  He  bore 
no  resentment  after  the  first  tingling  moments  were 
past ;  he  rather  admired  her  for  it ;  and  he  would 
have  been  ready  to  go  back  half  an  hour  later,  and 
accept  pardon,  and  be  on  the  footing  of  last  summer 
again.  ^Even  now  he  debated  with  himself  whether 
it  was  too  late  to  call ;  but  decidedly  a  quarter  to  ten 
seemed  late.  The  next  day  he  determined  never  to 
call  upon  the  Leightons  again  ;  but  he  had  no  reason 
for  this  ;  it  merely  came  into  a  transitory  scheme  of 
conduct,  of  retirement  from  the  society  of  women 
altogether ;  and  after  dinner  he  went  round  to  see 
them. 

He  asked  for  the  ladies,  and  they  all  three  received 
him,  Alma  not  without  a  surprise  that  intimated  itself 
to  him,  and  her  mother  with  no  appreciable  relent- 
ing; Miss  Woodburn,  with  the  needlework  which 
she  found  easier  to  be  voluble  over  than  a  book, 
expressed  in  her  welcome  a  neutrality  both  cordial 
to  Beaton  and  loyal  to  Alma. 

"  Is  it  snowing  out-do's  1 "  she  asked  briskly,  after 
the  greetings  were  transacted.  "  Mah  goodness  ! " 


224  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

she  said,  in  answer  to  his  apparent  surprise  at  the 
question.  "  Ah  mahght  as  well  have  stayed  in  the 
Soath,  for  all  the  winter  Ah  have  seen  in  New  York 
yet."  ' 

"We  don't  often  have  snow  much  before  New- 
Year's,"  said  Beaton. 

"  Miss  Woodburn  is  wild  for  a  real  Northern 
winter,"  Mrs.  Leighton  explained. 

"The  othah  naght  Ah  woke  up  and  looked  oat 
of  the  window  and  saw  all  the  roofs  covered  with 
snow,  and  it  turned  oat  to  be  nothing  but  moonlaght. 
I  was  never  so  disappointed  in  mah  lahfe,"  said  Miss 
Woodburn. 

"  If  you  '11  come  to  St.  Barnaby  next  summer,  you 
shall  have  all  the  winter  you  want,"  said  Alma. 

"  I  can't  let  you  slander  St.  Barnaby  in  that  way," 
said  Beaton,  with  the  air  of  wishing  to  be  understood 
as  meaning  more  than  he  said. 

"  Yes  ? "  returned  Alma  coolly.  "  I  didn't  know 
you  were  so  fond  of  the  climate." 

"  I  never  think  of  it  as  a  climate.  It 's  a  landscape. 
It  doesn't  matter  whether  it's  hot  or  cold." 

"With  the  thermometer  twenty  below,  you'd 
find  that  it  mattered,"  Alma  persisted. 

"You  don't  mean  it  goes  doan  to  that  in  the 
summah  ?  "  Miss  Woodburn  interposed. 

"  Well,  not  before  the  Fourth  of  the  July  after," 
Alma  admitted. 

"Is  that  the  way  you  feel  about  St.  Barnaby 
too,  Mrs.  Leighton  ? "  Beaton  asked,  with  affected 
desolation. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES        225 

"  I  shall  be  glad  enough  to  go  back  in  the  summer," 
Mrs.  Leigh  ton  conceded. 

"  And  I  should  be  glad  to  go  now,"  said  Beaton, 
looking  at  Alma.  He  had  the  dummy  of  Every  Other 
Week  in  his  hand,  and  he  saw  Alma's  eyes  wandering 
toward  it  whenever  he  glanced  at  her.  "  I  should 
be  glad  to  go  anywhere  to  get  out  of  a  job  I  Ve 
undertaken,"  he  continued,  to  Mrs.  Leighton. 
"They're  going  to  start  some  sort  of  a  new 
illustrated  magazine,  and  they've  got  me  in  for 
their  art  department.  I  'm  not  fit  for  it ;  I  'd  like  to 
run  away.  Don't  you  want  to  advise  me  a  little, 
Mrs.  Leighton  ]  You  know  how  much  I  value  your 
taste,  and  I  'd  like  to  have  you  look  at  the  design 
for  the  cover  of  the  .first  number :  they  're  going  to 
have  a  different  one  for  every  number.  I  don't 
know  whether  you  '11  agree  with  me,  but  I  think 
this  is  rather  nice." 

He  faced  the  dummy  round,  and  then  laid  it 
on  the  table  before  Mrs.  Leighton,  pushing  some 
of  her  work  aside  to  make  room  for  it,  and 
standing  over  her  while  she  bent  forward  to  look 
at  it. 

Alma  kept  her  place,  away  from  the  table. 

"  Mah  goodness  !  Ho'  exciting  !  "  said  Miss 
Woodburn.  "  May  anybody  look  ? " 

"  Everybody,"  said  Beaton. 

"  Well,  isn't  it  perfectly  chawming  ! "  Miss  Wood- 
burn   exclaimed.     "  Come    and   look   at   this,   Miss 
Leighton,"   she    called   to    Alma,    who    reluctantly 
approached. 
10* 


226  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  What  lines  are  these  1 "  Mrs.  Leighton  asked, 
pointing  to  Beaton's  pencil  scratches. 

"They're  suggestions  of  modification,"  he  re- 
plied. 

"  I  don't  think  they  improve  it  much.  What  do 
you  think,  Alma  1 " 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,"  said  the  girl,  constraining 
her  voice  to  an  effect  of  indifference,  and  glancing 
carelessly  down  at  the  sketch.  "  The  design  might 
be  improved;  but  I  don't  think  those  suggestions 
would  do  it." 

"They  're  mine,"  said  Beaton,  fixing  his  eyes  upon 
her  with  a  beautiful  sad  dreaminess  that  he  knew 
he  could  put  into  them ;  he  spoke  with  a  dreamy 
remoteness  of  tone :  his  wind-harp  stop,  Wetmore 
called  it. 

"  I  supposed  so,"  said  Alma  calmly. 

"  Oh,  mah  goodness ! "  cried  Miss  Woodburn. 
"  Is  that  the  way  you  awtusts  talk  to  each  othah  ? 
Well,  Ah  'm  glad  Ah  'm  not  an  awtust — unless  I 
could  do  all  the  talking." 

"Artists  cannot  tell  a  fib,"  Alma  said,  "or  even 
act  one,"  and  she  laughed  in  Beaton's  upturned  face. 

He  did  not  unbend  his  dreamy  gaze.  "You're 
quite  right.  The  suggestions  are  stupid." 

Alma  turned  to  Miss  Woodburn  :  "  You  hear  ? 
Even  when  we  speak  of  our  own  work." 

"  Ah  nevah  hoad  anything  lahke  it ! " 

"And  the  design  itself1?  "  Beaton  persisted. 

"  Oh,  I  'm  not  an  art  editor,"  Alma  answered, 
with  a  laugh  of  exultant  evasion. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       227 

A  tall,  dark,  grave-looking  man  of  fifty,  with  a 
swarthy  face,  and  iron-grey  moustache  and  imperial 
and  goatee,  entered  the  room.  Beaton  knew  the 
type ;  he  had  been  through  Virginia  sketching  for 
one  of  the  illustrated  papers,  and  he  had  seen  such 
men  in  Bichmond.  Miss  Woodburn  hardly  needed 
to  say,  "  May  Ah  introduce  you  to  mah  fathaw, 
Co'nel  Woodburn,  Mr.  Beaton  1 " 

The  men  shook  hands,  and  Colonel  Woodburn 
said,  in  that  soft,  gentle,  slow  Southern  voice  with- 
out our  Northern  contractions  :  "  I  am  very  glad  to 
meet  you,  sir;  happy  to  make  yo'  acquaintance. 
Do  not  move,  madam,"  he  said  to  Mrs.  Leighton, 
who  made  a  deprecatory  motion  to  let  him  pass  to 
the  chair  beyond  her;  "I  can  find  my  way."  He 
bowed  a  bulk  that  did  not  lend  itself  readily  to  the 
devotion,  and  picked  up  the  ball  of  yarn  she  had  let 
drop  out  of  her  lap  in  half  rising.  "  Yo'  worsteds, 
madam." 

"  Yarn,  yarn,  Colonel  Woodburn  ! "  Alma  shouted. 
"  You  're  quite  incorrigible.  A  spade  is  a  spade  !  "  . 

"But  sometimes  it  is  a  trump,  my  dear  young 
lady,"  said  the  Colonel,  with  unabated  gallantry ; 
"and  when  yo'  mothah  uses  yarn,  it  is  worsteds. 
But  I  respect  worsteds  even  under  the  name  of  yarn  : 
our  ladies — my  own  mothah  and  sistahs — had  to 
knit  the  socks  we  wore — all  we  could  get — in  the 
woe." 

"Yes,  and  aftah  the  woe,"  his  daughter  put  in. 
"The  knitting  has  not  stopped  yet  in  some  places. 
Have  you  been  much  in  the  Soath,  Mr.  Beaton  ? " 
Q 


228  A  HAZARD   OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

Beaton  explained  just  how  much. 

"Well,  sir,"  said  the  Colonel,  "then  you  have 
seen  a  country  making  gigantic  struggles  to  retrieve 
its  losses,  sir.  The  south  is  advancing  with  enor- 
mous strides,  sir." 

"  Too  fast  for  some  of  us  to  keep  up,"  said  Miss 
Woodburn,  in  an  audible  aside.  "  The  pace  in 
Charlottesboag  is  pofectly  killing,  and  we  had  to 
drop  oat  into  a  slow  place  like  New  York." 

"  The  progress  in  the  South  is  material  now/' 
said  the  Colonel ;  "  and  those  of  us  whose  interests 
are  in  another  direction  find  ourselves — isolated — 
isolated,  sir.  The  intellectual  centres  are  still  in 
the  No'th,  sir ;  the  great  cities  draw  the  mental 
activity  of  the  country  to  them,  sir.  Necessarily 
New  York  is  the  metropolis." 

"  Oh,  everything  comes  here,"  said  Beaton,  im- 
patient of  the  elder's  ponderosity.  Another  sort  of 
man  would  have  sympathised  with  the  Southerner's 
willingness  to  talk  of  himself,  and  led  him  on  to 
speak  of  his  plans  and  ideals.  But  the  sort  of  man 
that  Beaton  was  could  not  do  this ;  he  put  up  the 
dummy  into  the  wrapper  he  had  let  drop  on  the 
floor  beside  him,  and  tied  it  round  with  string  while 
Colonel  Woodburn  was  talking.  He  got  to  his 
feet  with  the  words  he  spoke,  and  offered  Mrs. 
Leighton  his  hand. 

"  Must  you  go  ? "  she  asked,  in  surprise. 

"  I  am  on  my  way  to  a  reception,"  he  said.  She 
had  noticed  that  he  was  in  evening  dress ;  and  now 
she  felt  the  vague  hurt  that  people  invited  nowhere 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  229 

feel  in  the  presence  of  those  who  are  going  some- 
where. She  did  not  feel  it  for  herself,  but  for  her 
daughter ;  and  she  knew  Alma  would  not  have  let 
her  feel  it  if  she  could  have  prevented  it.  But  Alma 
had  left  the  room  for  a  moment,  and  she  tacitly 
indulged  this  sense  of  injury  in  her  behalf. 

"  Please  say  good  night  to  Miss  Leigh  ton  for  me," 
Beaton  continued.  He  bowed  to  Miss  Woodburn, 
"  Good  night,  Miss  Woodburn,"  and  to  her  father 
bluntly,  "Goodnight." 

"  Good  night,  sir,"  said  the  Colonel,  with  a  sort  of 
severe  suavity. 

"  Oh,  isn't  he  chawming ! "  Miss  Woodburn  whis- 
pered to  Mrs.  Leighton  when  Beaton  left  the  room. 

Alma  spoke  to  him  in  the  hall  without.  "  You 
knew  that  was  my  design  Mr.  Beaton.  Why  did 
you  bring  it  1 " 

"  Why  1 "  He  looked  at  her  in  gloomy  hesita- 
tion. Then  he  said :  "You  know  why.  I  wished 
to  talk  it  over  with  you,  to  serve  you,  please  you, 
get  back  your  good  opinion.  But  I  've  done  neither 
the  one  nor  the  other ;  I  Ve  made  a  mess  of  the 
whole  thing." 

Alma  interrupted  him.     "  Has  it  been  accepted  ? " 

"It  will  be  accepted,  if  you  will  let  it." 

"  Let  it  ? "  she  laughed.  "  I  shall  be  delighted." 
She  saw  him  swayed  a  little  toward  her.  "  It 's  a 
matter  of  business,  isn't  it  ? " 

"  Purely.     Good  night." 

When  Alma  returned  to  the  room,  Colonel  Wood- 
burn  was  saying  to  Mrs.  Leighton  :  "  I  do  not  contend 


230       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

that  it  is  impossible,  madam,  but  it  is  very  difficult 
in  a  thoroughly  commercialised  society,  like  yours, 
to  have  the  feelings  of  a  gentleman.  How  can  a 
business  man,  whose  prosperity,  whose  earthly  salva- 
tion, necessarily  lies  in  the  adversity  of  some  one 
else,  be  delicate  and  chivalrous,  or  even  honest  ?  If 
we  could  have  had  time  to  perfect  our  system  at  the 
South,  to  eliminate  what  was  evil  and  develop  what 
was  good  in  it,  we  should  have  had  a  perfect  system. 
But  the  virus  of  commercialism  was  in  us  too;  it 
forbade  us  to  make  the  best  of  a  divine  institution, 
and  tempted  us  to  make  the  worst.  Now  the  curse 
is  on  the  whole  country ;  the  dollar  is  the  measure 
of  every  value,  the  stamp  of  every  success.  What 
does  not  sell  is  a  failure ;  and  what  sells  succeeds." 

"The  hobby  is  oat,  man  deah,"  said  Miss  Wood- 
burn,  in  an  audible  aside  to  Alma. 

"  Were  you  speaking  of  me,  Colonel  Woodburn  ? " 
Alma  asked. 

"  Surely  not,  my  dear  young  lady." 

"But  he's  been  saying  that  awtusts  are  just  as 
greedy  aboat  money  as  anybody,"  said  his  daughter. 

"  The  law  of  commercialism  is  on  everything  in  a 
commercial  society,"  the  Colonel  explained,  softening 
the  tone  in  which  his  convictions  were  presented. 
"The  final  reward  of  art  is  money,  and  not  the 
pleasure  of  creating." 

"  Perhaps  they  would  be  willing  to  take  it  all  oat 
in  that,  if  othah  people  would  let  them  pay  their 
bills  in  the  pleasure  of  creating,"  his  daughter  teased. 

"They  are  helpless,  like  all  the  rest,"  said  her 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  231 

father,  with  the  same  deference  to  her  as  to  other 
women.  "I  do  not  blame  them." 

"  Oh,  mah  goodness  !  Didn't  you  say,  sir,  that 
Mr.  Beaton  had  bad  manners  ? " 

Alma  relieved  a  confusion  which  he  seemed  to 
feel  in  reference  to  her.  "  Bad  manners  ?  He  has 
no  manners  !  That  is,  when  he  's  himself.  He  has 
pretty  good  ones  when  he 's  somebody  else." 

Miss  Woodburn  began,  "  Oh,  mah "  and  then 

stopped  herself.  Alma's  mother  looked  at  her  with 
distressful  question,  but  the  girl  seemed  perfectly 
cool  and  contented  ;  and  she  gave  her  mind  pro- 
visionally to  a  point  suggested  by  Colonel  Wood- 
burn's  talk. 

"  Still,  I  can't  believe  it  was  right  to  hold  people 
in  slavery,  to  whip  them  and  sell  them.  It  never 
did 'seem  right  tome,"  she  added,  in  apology  for 
her  extreme  sentiments  to  the  gentleness  of  her 
adversary. 

"I  quite  agree  with  you,  madam/'  said  the 
Colonel.  "  Those  were  the  abuses  of  the  institution. 
But  if  we  had  not  been  vitiated  on  the  one  hand  and 
threatened  on  the  other  by  the  spirit  of  com- 
mercialism from  the  North — and  from  Europe  too — • 
those  abuses  could  have  been  eliminated,  and  the 
institution  developed  in  the  direction  of  the  mild 
patriarchalism  of  the  divine  intention."  The  Colonel 
hitched  his  chair,  which  figured  a  hobby  careering 
upon  its  hind  legs,  a  little  toward  Mrs.  Leighton, 
and  the  girls  approached  their  heads,  and  began  to 
whisper;  they  fell  deferentially  silent  when  the 


232  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

Colonel  paused  in  his  argument,  and  went  on  again 
when  he  went  on. 

At  last  they  heard  Mrs.  Leighton  saying,  "And 
have  you  heard  from  the  publishers  about  your  book 
yet  ? " 

Then  Miss  Woodburn  cut  in,  before  her  father 
could  answer :  "  The  coase  of  commercialism  is  on 
that  too.  They  are  trahing  to  fahnd  oat  whethah 
it  will  pay." 

"  And  they  are  right — quite  right,"  said  the 
Colonel.  "  There  is  no  longer  any  other  criterion  ; 
and  even  a  work  that  attacks  the  system  must  be 
submitted  to  the  tests  of  the  system." 

"The  system  won't  accept  destruction  on  any 
othah  tomes,"  said  Miss  Woodburn  demurely. 


XL 


AT  the  reception,  where  two  men  in  livery  stood 
aside  to  let  him  pass  up  the  outside  steps  of  the 
house,  and  two  more  helped  him  off  with  his  over- 
coat indoors,  and  a  fifth  miscalled  his  name  into 
the  drawing-room,  the  Syracuse  stone-cutter's  son 
met  the  niece  of  Mrs.  Horn,  and  began  at  once  to 
tell  her  about  his  evening  at  the  Dryfooses'.  He 
was  in  very  good  spirits,  for  so  far  as  he  could  have 
been  elated  or  depressed  by  his  parting  with  Alma 
Leighton  he  had  been  elated ;  she  had  not  treated 
his  impudence  with  the  contempt  that  he  felt  it 
deserved ;  she  must  still  be  fond  of  him ;  and  the 
warm  sense  of  this,  by  operation  of  an  obscure  but 
well-recognised  law  of  the  masculine  being,  disposed 
him  to  be  rather  fond  of  Miss  Vance.  She  was  a 
slender  girl,  whose  semi-aesthetic  dress  flowed  about 
her  with  an  accentuation  of  her  long  forms,  and 
redeemed  them  from  censure  by  the  very  frankness 
with  which  it  confessed  them;  nobody  could  have 
said  that  Margaret  Vance  was  too  tall.  Her  pretty 
little  head,  which  she  had  an  effect  of  choosing  to 
have  little  in  the  same  spirit  of  judicious  defiance, 
had  a  good  deal  of  reading  in  it ;  she  was  proud  to 


234       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

know  literary  and  artistic  fashions  as  well  as  society 
fashions.  She  liked  being  singled  out  by  an  exterior 
distinction  so  obvious  as  Beaton's,  and  she  listened 
with  sympathetic  interest  to  his  account  of  those 
people.  He  gave  their  natural  history  reality  by 
drawing  upon  his  own ;  he  reconstructed  their 
plebeian  past  from  the  experiences  of  his  childhood 
and  his  youth  of  the  pre-Parisian  period  ;  and  he 
had  a  pang  of  suicidal  joy  in  insulting  their  ignorance 
of  the  world. 

"  What  different  kinds  of  people  you  meet ! "  said 
the  girl  at  last,  with  an  envious  sigh.  Her  reading 
had  enlarged  the  bounds  of  her  imagination,  if  not 
her  knowledge ;  the  novels  nowadays  dealt  so  much 
with  very  common  people,  and  made  them  seem  so 
very  much  more  worth  while  than  the  people  one  met. 

She  said  something  like  this  to  Beaton.  He 
answered:  "You  can  meet  the  people  I'm  talking 
of  very  easily,  if  you  want  to  take  the  trouble. 
It 's  what  they  came  to  New  York  for.  I  fancy  it 's 
the  great  ambition  of  their  lives  to  be  met." 

"Oh  yes,"  said  Miss  Vance  fashionably,  and 
looked  down ;  then  she  looked  up  and  said  intel- 
lectually :  "  Don't  you  think  it 's  a  great  pity  ? 
How  much  better  for  them  to  have  stayed  where 
they  were  and  what  they  were  ! " 

"Then  you  could  never  have  had  any  chance  of 
meeting  them,"  said  Beaton.  "  I  don't  suppose  you 
intend  to  go  out  to  the  gas  country  1 " 

"No,"  said  Miss  Vance,  amused.  "Not  that  I 
shouldn't  like  to  go." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  235 

"  What  a  daring  spirit !  You  ought  to  be  on  the 
staff  of  Every  Other  Week"  said  Beaton. 

"  The  staff—  Every  Other  Week  1     What  is  it  ?  " 

"  The  missing  link ;  the  long-felt  want  of  a  tie 
between  the  Arts  and  the  Dollars."  Beaton  gave 
her  a  very  picturesque,  a  very  dramatic  sketch  of 
the  theory,  the  purpose,  and  the  personnel  of  the  new 
enterprise. 

Miss  Vance  understood  too  little  about  business 
of  any  kind  to  know  how  it  differed  from  other 
enterprises  of  its  sort.  She  thought  it  was  de- 
lightful ;  she  thought  Beaton  must  be  glad  to  be 
part  of  it,  though  he  had  represented  himself  so 
bored,  so  injured,  by  Fulkerson's  insisting  upon 
having  him.  "And  is  it  a  secret1?  Is  it  a  thing 
not  to  be  spoken  of  1 " 

"  Tut?  altro !  Fulkerson  will  be  enraptured  to 
have  it  spoken  of  in  society.  He  would  pay  any 
reasonable  bill  for  the  advertisement." 

"  What  a  delightful  creature  !  Tell  him  it  shall 
all  be  spent  in  charity." 

"He  would  like  that  He  would  get  two  para- 
graphs out  of  the  fact,  and  your  name  would  go  into 
the  '  Literary  Notes'  of  all  the  Newspapers." 

"  Oh,  but  I  shouldn't  want  my  name  used  !  "  cried 
the  girl,  half  horrified  into  fancying  the  situa- 
tion real. 

"Then  you'd  better  not  say  anything  about 
Every  Other  Week.  Fulkerson  is  preternaturally 
unscrupulous." 

March  began  to  think  so  too,  at  times.     He  was 


236  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

perpetually  suggesting  changes  in  the  make-up  of 
the  first  number,  with  a  view  to  its  greater  vividness 
of  effect.  One  day  he  came  in  and  said  :  "  This 
thing  isn't  going  to  have  any  sort  of  get  up  and 
howl  about  it,  unless  you  have  a  paper  in  the  first 
number  going  for  Bevans's  novels.  Better  get 
Maxwell  to  do  it." 

"  Why,  I  thought  you  liked  Bevans's  novels  ? " 

"So  I  do;  but  where  the  good  of  Every  Other 
Week  is  concerned  I  am  a  Roman  father.  The 
popular  gag  is  to  abuse  Bevans,  and  Maxwell  is 
the  man  to  do  it.  There  hasn't  been  a  new  maga- 
zine started  for  the  last  three  years  that  hasn't  had 
an  article  from  Maxwell  in  its  first  number  cutting 
Bevans  all  to  pieces.  If  people  don't  see  it,  they  '11 
think  Every  Other  Week  is  some  old  thing." 

March  did  not  know  whether  Fulkerson  was 
joking  or  not.  He  suggested,  "  Perhaps  they  '11 
think  it 's  an  old  thing  if  they  do  see  it." 

"  Well,  get  somebody  else,  then ;  or  else  get 
Maxwell  to  write  under  an  assumed  name.  Or — 
I  forgot !  He  '11  be  anonymous  under  our  system 
anyway.  Now  there  ain't  a  more  popular  racket 
for  us  to  work  in  that  first  number  than  a  good, 
swingeing  attack  on  Bevans.  People  read  his  books 
and  quarrel  over  'em,  and  the  critics  are  all  against 
him,  and  a  regular  flaying,  with  salt  and  vinegar 
rubbed  in  afterward,  will  tell  more  with  people  who 
like  good  old-fashioned  fiction  than  anything  else. 
/  like  Bevans's  things,  but,  dad  burn  it !  when  it 
comes  to  that  first  number,  I  'd  offer  up  anybody." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  237 

"  What  an  immoral  little  wretch  you  are,  Fulker- 
son  !  "  said  March,  with  a  laugh. 

Fulkerson  appeared  not  to  be  very  strenuous 
about  the  attack  on  the  novelist.  "  Say  !"  he  called 
out  gaily,  "  what  should  you  think  of  a  paper 
defending  the  late  lamented  system  of  slavery  1 " 

"  What  do  you  mean,  Fulkerson  1 "  asked  March, 
with  a  puzzled  smile. 

Fulkerson  braced  his  knees  against  his  desk,  and 
pushed  himself  back,  but  kept  his  balance  to  the  eye 
by  canting  his  hat  sharply  forward.  "There's  an 
old  cock  over  there  at  the  widow's  that 's  written  a 
book  to  prove  that  slavery  was  and  is  the  only  solu- 
tion of  the  labour  problem.  He's  a  Southerner." 

"  I  should  imagine,"  March  assented. 

"  He  's  got  it  on  the  brain  that  if  the  South  could 
have  been  let  alone  by  the  commercial  spirit  and  the 
pseudo-philanthropy  of  the  North,  it  would  have 
worked  out  slavery  into  a  perfectly  ideal  condition 
for  the  labourer,  in  which  he  would  have  been 
insured  against  want,  and  protected  in  all  his 
personal  rights  by  the  state.  He  read  the  introduc- 
tion to  me  last  night.  I  didn't  catch  on  to  all  the 
points — his  daughter 's  an  awfully  pretty  girl,  and  I 
was  carrying  that  fact  in  my  mind  all  the  time  too, 
you  know — but  that 's  about  the  gist  of  it." 

"  Seems  to  regard  it  as  a  lost  opportunity  ? "  said 
March. 

"  Exactly  !  What  a  mighty  catchy  title,  heigh  ? 
Look  well  on  the  title-page." 

"  Well  written  ?  " 


238  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  I  reckon  so  ;  I  don't  know.  The  Colonel  read 
it  mighty  eloquently." 

"  It  mightn't  be  such  bad  business,"  said  March, 
in  a  muse.  "  Could  you  get  me  a  sight  of  it  without 
committing  yourself  1 " 

"  If  the  Colonel  hasn't  sent  it  off  to  another 
publisher  this  morning.  He  just  got  it  back 
with  thanks  yesterday.  He  likes  to  keep  it  travel- 
ling." 

"  Well,  try  it.  I  've  a  notion  it  might  be  a  curious 
thing." 

"  Look  here,  March,"  said  Fulkerson,  with  the 
effect  of  taking  a  fresh  hold  ;  "I  wish  you  could  let 
me  have  one  of  those  New  York  things  of  yours  for 
the  first  number.  After  all,  that 's  going  to  be  the 
great  card." 

"  I  couldn't,  Fulkerson ;  I  couldn't,  really.  I 
want  to  philosophise  the  material,  and  I  'm  too  new 
to  it  all  yet.  I  don't  want  to  do  merely  superficial 
sketches." 

"  Of  course  !  Of  course  !  I  understand  that. 
Well,  I  don't  want  to  hurry  you.  Seen  that  old 
fellow  of  yours  yet  ?  I  think  we  ought  to  have  that 
translation  in  the  first  number ;  don't  you  ?  We 
want  to  give  'em  a  notion  of  what  we  're  going  to  do 
in  that  line." 

"Yes,"  said  March;  "and  I  was  going  out  to  look 
up  Lindau  this  morning.  I  Ve  inquired  at  Maroni's, 
and  he  hasn't  been  there  for  several  days.  I  've 
some  idea  perhaps  he 's  sick.  But  they  gave  me  his 
address,  and  I  'm  going  to  see." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        239 

"  Well,  that 's  right.  We  want  the  first  number 
to  be  the  key-note  in  every  way." 

March  shook  his  head.  "  You  can't  make  it  so. 
The  first  number  is  bound  to  be  a  failure  always,  as 
far  as  the  representative  character  goes.  It 's  invari- 
ably the  case.  Look  at  the  first  numbers  of  all  the 
things  you  've  seen  started.  They  're  experimental, 
almost  amateurish,  and  necessarily  so,  not  only  be- 
cause the  men  that  are  making  them  up  are  com- 
paratively inexperienced  like  ourselves,  but  because 
the  material  sent  them  to  deal  with  is  more  or  less 
consciously  tentative.  People  send  their  adventur- 
ous things  to  a  new  periodical  because  the  whole 
thing  is  an  adventure.  I  've  noticed  that  quality  in 
all  the  volunteer  contributions ;  it 's  in  the  articles 
that  have  been  done  to  order  even.  No;  I've 
about  made  up  my  mind  that  if  we  can  get  one 
good  striking  paper  into  the  first  number  that  will 
take  people's  minds  off  the  others,  we  shall  be  doing 
all  we  can  possibly  hope  for.  I  should  like,"  Marcli 
added,  less  seriously,  "  to  make  up  three  numbers 
ahead,  and  publish  the  third  one  first." 

Fulkerson  dropped  forward  and  struck  his  fist  on 
the  desk.  "  It 's  a  first-rate  idea.  Why  not  do  it  1 " 

March  laughed.  "  Fulkerson,  I  don't  believe 
there 's  any  quackish  thing  you  wouldn't  do  in  this 
cause.  From  time  to  time  I  'm  thoroughly  ashamed 
of  being  connected  with  such  a  charlatan." 

Fulkerson  struck  his  hat  sharply  backward.  "  Ah, 
dad  burn  it !  To  give  that  thing  the  right  kind  of 
start  I  'd  walk  up  and  down  Broadway  between  two 


240  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

boards,  with  the  title-page  of  Every  Other  JFeek 
facsimiled  on  one  and  my  name  and  address  on 

the "  He  jumped  to  his  feet  and  shouted, 

"March,  I'll  doit!" 

"  What  ?  " 

11 1  '11  hire  a  lot  of  fellows  to  make  mud-turtles  of 
themselves,  and  I  '11  have  a  lot  of  big  facsimiles  of 
the  title-page,  and  I  '11  paint  the  town  red  ! " 

March  looked  aghast  at  him.  "  Oh,  come,  nowr 
Fulkerson ! " 

':  I  mean  it.  I  was  in  London  when  a  new  man 
had  taken  hold  of  the  old  Cornhill,  and  they  were 
trying  to  boom  it,  and  they  had  a  procession  of 
these  mud-turtles  that  reached  from  Charing  Cross 
to  Temple  Bar.  '  Cornhill  Magazine.  Sixpence. 
Not  a  dull  page  in  it.'  I  said  to  myself  then  that 
it  was  the  livest  thing  I  ever  saw.  I  respected  the 
man  that  did  that  thing  from  the  bottom  of  my 
heart.  I  wonder  I  ever  forgot  it.  But  it  shows 
what  a  shaky  thing  the  human  mind  is  at  its  best." 

"  You  infamous  mountebank  !  "  said  March,  with 
great  amusement  at  Fulkerson's  access;  "you  call 
that  congeries  of  advertising  instincts  of  yours  the 
human  mind  at  its  best  ?  Come,  don't  be  so  diffi- 
dent, Fulkerson.  Well,  I  'm  off  to  find  Lindau,  and 
when  I  come  back  I  hope  Mr.  Dryfoos  will  have  you 
under  control.  I  don't  suppose  you  '11  be  quite  sane 
again  till  after  the  first  number  is  out.  Perhaps- 
public  opinion  will  sober  you  then." 

"  Confound  it,  March  !  How  do  you  think  they 
will  take  it  ?  I  swear  I  'm  getting  so  nervous  I  don't 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  241 

know  half  the  time  which  end  of  me  is  up.  I  believe 
if  we  don't  get  that  thing  out  by  the  first  of  February 
it  '11  be  the  death  of  me." 

"  Couldn't  wait  till  Washington's  Birthday  1  I 
was  thinking  it  would  give  the  day  a  kind  of  distinc- 
tion, and  strike  the  public  imagination,  if " 

"No,  I'll  be  dogged  if  I  could!"  Fulkerson 
lapsed  more  and  more  into  the  parlance  of  his  early 
life  in  this  season  of  strong  excitement.  "  I  believe 
if  Beaton  lags  any  on  the  art-leg  I  '11  kill  him." 

"Well,  /  shouldn't  mind  your  killing  Beaton," 
said  March  tranquilly,  as  he  went  out. 

He  went  over  .to  Third  Avenue  and  took  the 
Elevated  down  to  Chatham  Square.  He  found  the 
variety  of  people  in  the  car  as  unfailingly  entertaining 
as  ever.  He  rather  preferred  the  east  side  to  the  west 
side  lines,  because  they  offered  more  nationalities, 
conditions,  and  characters  to  his  inspection.  They 
draw  not  only  from  the  uptown  American  region, 
but  from  all  the  vast  hive  of  populations  swarming 
between  them  and  the  East  Kiver.  He  had  found 
that,  according  to  the  hour,  American  husbands 
going  to  and  from  business,  and  American  wives 
going  to  and  from  shopping,  prevailed  on  the  Sixth 
Avenue  road,  and  that  the  most  picturesque  admix- 
ture to  these  familiar  aspects  of  human  nature  were 
the  brilliant  eyes  and  complexions  of  the  American 
Hebrews,  who  otherwise  contributed  to  the  effect  of 
well-clad  comfort  and  citizen-self-satisfaction  of  the 
crowd.  Now  and  then  he  had  found  himself  in  a  car 
mostly  filled  with  Neapolitans  from  the  constructions 
VOL.  I.— 11 


242  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

far  up  the  line,  where  he  had  read  how  they  are 
worked  and  fed  and  housed  like  beasts  ;  and  listening 
to  the  jargon  of  their  unintelligible  dialect,  he  had 
occasion  for  pensive  question  within  himself  as  to 
what  notion  these  poor  animals  formed  of  a  free 
republic  from  their  experience  of  life  under  its  con- 
ditions ;  and  whether  they  found  them  practically 
very  different  from  those  of  the  immemorial 
brigandage  and  enforced  complicity  with  rapine 
under  which  they  had  been  born.  But,  after  all, 
this  was  an  infrequent  effect,  Ijowever  massive,  of 
travel  on  the  west  side,  whereas  the  east  offered  him 
continual  entertainment  in  like  sort.  The  sort  was 
never  quite  so  squalid.  For  short  distances  the 
lowest  poverty,  the  hardest  pressed  labour,  must  walk; 
but  March  never  entered  a  car  without  encountering 
some  interesting  shape  of  shabby  adversity,  which 
was  almost  always  adversity  of  foreign  birth.  New 
York  is  still  popularly  supposed  to  be  in  the  control 
of  the  Irish,  but  March  noticed  in  these  east  side 
travels  of  his  what  must  strike  every  observer  re- 
turning to  the  city  after  a  prolonged  absence :  the 
numerical  subordination  of  the  dominant  race.  If 
they  do  not  out-vote  them,  the  people  of  Germanic, 
of  Slavonic,  of  Pelasgic,  of  Mongolian  stock  out- 
number the  prepotent  Celts;  and  March  seldom 
found  his  speculation  centred  upon  one  of  these. 
The  small  eyes,  the  high  cheeks,  the  broad  noses,  the 
puff  lips,  the  bare,  cue-filleted  skulls,  of  Russians, 
Poles,  Czechs,  Chinese ;  the  furtive  glitter  of  Italians  ; 
the  blonde  dulness  of  Germans ;  the  cold  quiet  of 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  243 

Scandinavians — fire  under  ice — were  aspects  that  he 
identified,  and  that  gave  him  abundant  suggestion 
for  the  personal  histories  he  constructed,  and  for  the 
more  public-spirited  reveries  in  which  he  dealt  with 
the  future  economy  of  our  heterogeneous  common- 
wealth. It  must  be  owned  that  he  did  not  take 
much  trouble  about  this ;  what  these  poor  people 
were  thinking,  hoping,  fearing,  enjoying,  suffering ; 
just  where  and  how  they  lived  ;  who  and  what  they 
individually  were — these  were  the  matters  of  his 
waking  dreams  as  he  stared  hard  at  them,  while  the 
train  raced  further  into  the  gay  ugliness — the  shape- 
less, graceless,  reckless  picturesqueness  of  the  Bowery. 
There  were  certain  signs,  certain  facades,  certain 
audacities  of  the  prevailing  hideousness  that  always 
amused  him  in  that  uproar  to  the  eye  which  the 
strident  forms  and  colours  made.  He  was  interested 
in  the  insolence  with  which  the  railway  had  drawn 
its  erasing  line  across  the  Corinthian  front  of  an  old 
theatre,  almost  grazing  its  fluted  pillars,  and  flouting 
its  dishonoured  pediment.  The  colossal  effigies  of  the 
fat  women  and  the  tuft-headed  Circassian  girls  of 
cheap  museums;  the  vistas  of  shabby  cross  streets;  the 
survival  of  an  old  hip-roofed  house  here  and  there  at 
their  angles ;  the  Swiss  chalet,  histrionic  decorative- 
ness  of  the  stations  in  prospect  or  retrospect ;  the 
vagaries  of  the  lines  that  narrowed  together  or 
stretched  apart  according  to  the  width  of  the 
avenue,  but  always  in  wanton  disregard  of  the  life 
that  dwelt,  and  bought  and  sold,  and  rejoiced  or 
sorrowed,  and  clattered  or  crawled,  around,  below, 
R 


244  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

above — were  features  of  the  frantic  panorama  that 
perpetually  touched  his  sense  of  humour  and  moved 
his  sympathy.  Accident  and  then  exigency  seemed 
the  forces  at  work  to  this  extraordinary  effect ;  the 
play  of  energies  as  free  and  planless  as  those  that 
force  the  forest  from  the  soil  to  the  sky  ;  and  then 
the  fierce  straggle  for  survival,  with  the  stronger 
life  persisting  over  the  deformity,  the  mutilation, 
the  destruction,  the  decay  of  the  weaker  The 
whole  at  moments  seemed  to  him  lawless,  godless  ; 
the  absence  of  intelligent,  comprehensive  purpose  in 
the  huge  disorder,  and  the  violent  struggle  to 
subordinate  the  result  to  the  greater  good,  pene- 
trated with  its  dumb  appeal  the  consciousness  of  a 
man  who  had  always  been  too  self-enwrapt  to  per- 
ceive the  chaos  to  which  the  individual  selfishness 
must  always  lead. 

But  there  was  still  nothing  definite,  nothing  better 
than  a  vague  discomfort,  however  poignant,  in  his 
half  recognition  of  such  facts ;  and  he  descended  the 
station  stairs  at  Chatham  Square,  with  a  sense  of 
the  neglected  opportunities  of  painters  in  that 
locality.  He  said  to  himself  that  if  one  of  those 
fellows  were  to  see  in  Naples  that  turmoil  of  cars, 
trucks,  and  teams  of  every  sort,  intershot  with  foot- 
passengers  going  and  coming  to  and  from  the  crowded 
pavements,  under  the  web  of  the  railroad  tracks 
overhead,  and  amidst  the  spectacular  approach  of 
the  streets  that  open  into  the  square,  he  would  have 
it  down  in  his  sketch-book  at  once.  He  decided 
simultaneously  that  his  own  local  studies  must  be 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       245 

illustrated,  and  that  he  must  come  with  the  artist 
and  show  him  just  which  bits  to  do,  not  knowing 
that  the  two  arts  can  never  approach  the  same 
material  from  the  same  point.  He  thought  he 
would  particularly  like  his  illustrator  to  render  the 
Dickensy,  cockneyish  quality  of  the  shabby-genteel 
ballad-seller  of  whom  he  stopped  to  ask  his  way 
to  the  street  where  Lindau  lived,  and  whom  he 
instantly  perceived  to  be,  with  his  stock  in  trade, 
the  sufficient  object  of  an  entire  study  by  himself. 
He  had  his  ballads  strung  singly  upon  a  cord  against 
the  house  wall,  and  held  down  in  piles  on  the  pave- 
ment with  stones  and  blocks  of  wood.  Their  control 
in  this  way  intimated  a  volatility  which  was  not 
perceptible  in  their  sentiment.  They  were  mostly 
tragical  or  doleful :  some  of  them  dealt  with  the 
wrongs  of  the  working-man ;  others  appealed  to  a 
gay  experience  of  the  high  seas;  but  vastly  the 
greater  part  to  memories  and  associations  of  an 
Irish  origin ;  some  still  uttered  the  poetry  of  planta- 
tion life  in  the  artless  accents  of  the  end-man. 
Where  they  trusted  themselves,  with  syntax  that 
yielded  promptly  to  any  exigency  of  rhythmic  art, 
to  the  ordinary  American  speech,  it  was  to  strike 
directly  for  the  affections,  to  celebrate  the  domestic 
ties,  and,  above  all,  to  embalm  the  memories  of 
angel  and  martyr  mothers,  whose  dissipated  sons 
deplored  their  sufferings  too  late.  March  thought 
this  not  at  all  a  bad  thing  in  them ;  he  smiled  in 
patronage  of  their  simple  pathos ;  he  paid  the 
tribute  of  a  laugh  when  the  poet  turned,  as  he  some- 


246  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

times  did,  from  his  conception  of  angel  and  martyr 
motherhood,  and  portrayed  the  mother  in  her  more 
familiar  phases  of  virtue  and  duty,  with  the  retribu- 
tive shingle  or  slipper  in  her  hand.  He  bought  a 
pocketful  of  this  literature,  popular  in  a  sense  which 
the  most  successful  book  can  never  be,  and  enlisted 
the  ballad  vendor  so  deeply  in  the  effort  to  direct 
him  to  Lindau's  dwelling  by  the  best  way  that  he 
neglected  another  customer,  till  a  sarcasm  on  his 
absent-mindedness  stung  him  to  retort,  "  I  'm  a-try- 
ing  to  answer  a  gentleman  a  civil  question ;  that 's 
where  the  absent-minded  comes  in." 

It  seemed  for  some  reason  to  be  a  day  of  leisure 
with  the  Chinese  dwellers  in  Mott  Street,  which 
March  had  been  advised  to  take  first.  They  stood 
about  the  tops  of  basement  stairs,  and  walked  two 
and  two  along  the  dirty  pavement,  with  their  little 
hands  tucked  into  their  sleeves  across  their  breasts, 
aloof  in  immaculate  cleanliness  from  the  filth  around 
them,  and  scrutinising  the  scene  with  that  cynical 
sneer  of  faint  surprise  to  which  all  aspects  of  our 
civilisation  seem  to  move  their  superiority.  Their 
numbers  gave  character  to  the  street,  and  rendered 
not  them,  but  what  was  foreign  to  them,  strange 
there;  so  that  March  had  a  sense  of  missionary 
quality  in  the  old  Catholic  church,  built  long  before 
their  incursion  was  dreamt  of.  It  seemed  to  have 
come  to  them  there,  and  he  fancied  in  the  statued 
saint  that  looked  down  from  its  fa9ade  something 
not  so  much  tolerant  as  tolerated,  something  pro- 
pitiatory, almost  deprecative.  It  was  a  fancy,  of 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  247 

course ;  the  street  was  sufficiently  peopled  with 
Christian  children,  at  any  rate,  swarming  and 
shrieking  at  their  games  ;  and  presently  a  Chris- 
tian mother  appeared,  pushed  along  by  two  police- 
men on  a  handcart,  with  a  gelatinous  tremor  over 
the  paving  and  a  gelatinous  jouncing  at  the  curb- 
stones. She  lay  with  her  face  to  the  sky,  sending 
up  an  inarticulate  lamentation  ;  but  the  indifference 
of  the  officers  forbade  the  notion  of  tragedy  in  her 
case.  She  was  perhaps  a  local  celebrity;  the  children 
left  off  their  games,  and  ran  gaily  trooping  after  her; 
even  the  young  fellow  and  young  girl  exchanging 
playful  blows  in  a  robust  flirtation  at  the  corner  of  a 
liquor  store  suspended  their  scuffle  with  a  pleased 
interest  as  she  passed.  March  understood  the  un- 
willingness of  the  poor  to  leave  the  worst  conditions 
in  the  city  for  comfort  and  plenty  in  the  country 
when  he  reflected  upon  this  dramatic  incident,  one 
of  many  no  doubt  which  daily  occur  to  entertain 
them  in  such  streets.  A  small  town  could  rarely 
offer  anything  comparable  to  it,  and  the  country 
never.  He  said  that  if  life  appeared  so  hopeless  to 
him  as  it  must  to  the  dwellers  in  that  neighbour- 
hood he  should  not  himself  be  willing  to  quit  its 
distractions,  its  alleviations,  for  the  vague  promise 
of  unknown  good  in  the  distance  somewhere. 

But  what  charm  could  such  a  man  as  Lindau  find 
in  such  a  place  ?  It  could  not  be  that  he  lived  there 
because  he  was  too  poor  to  live  elsewhere :  with 
a  shutting  of  the  heart,  March  refused  to  believe 
this  as  he  looked  round  on  the  abounding  evidences 


248  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

of  misery,  and  guiltily  remembered  his  neglect  of 
his  old  friend.  Lindau  could  probably  find  as  cheap 
a  lodging  in  some  decenter  part  of  the  town ;  and 
in  fact  there  was  some  amelioration  of  the  prevailing 
squalor  in  the  quieter  street  which  he  turned  into 
from  Mott. 

A  woman  with  a  tied-up  face  of  toothache  opened 
the  door  for  him  when  he  pulled,  with  a  shiver  of 
foreboding,  the  bell  knob,  from  which  a  yard  of 
rusty  crape  dangled.  But  it  was  not  Lindau  who 
was  dead,  for  the  woman  said  he  was  at  home,  and 
sent  March  stumbling  up  the  four  or  five  dark  flights 
of  stairs  that  led  to  his  tenement.  It  was  quite  at  the 
top  of  the  house,  and  when  March  obeyed  the 
German-English  "  Komm  !  "  that  followed  his  knock, 
he  found  himself  in  a  kitchen  where  a  meagre 
breakfast  was  scattered  in  stale  fragments  on  the 
table  before  the  stove.  The  place  was  bare  and 
cold ;  a  half-empty  beer  bottle  scarcely  gave  it  a 
convivial  air.  On  the  left  from  this  kitchen  was  a 
room  with  a  bed  in  it,  which  seemed  also  to  be  a 
cobbler's  shop :  on  the  right,  through  a  door  that 
stood  ajar,  came  the  German-English  voice  again, 
saying  this  time,  "  Hier  1 " 


XII. 

MARCH  pushed  the  door  open  into  a  room  like 
that  on  the  left,  but  with  a  writing-desk  instead  of 
a  cobbler's  bench,  and  a  bed,  where  Lindau  sat 
propped  up,  with  a  coat  over  his  shoulders  and  a 
skull-cap  on  his  head,  reading  a  book,  from  which 
he  lifted  his  eyes  to  stare  blankly  over  his  spectacles 
at  March.  His  hairy  old  breast  showed  through  the 
night-shirt,  which  gaped  apart ;  the  stump  of  his 
left  arm  lay  upon  the  book  to  keep  it  open. 

"  Ah,  my  tear  yo'ng  friendt !  Passil !  Marge  ! 
Iss  it  you  1 "  he  called  out  joyously,  the  next 
moment. 

"  Why,  are  you  sick,  Lindau  1 "  March  anxiously 
scanned  his  face  in  taking  his  hand. 

Lindau  laughed.  "  No  ;  I  'm  all  righdt.  Only  a 
lidtle  lazy,  and  a  lidtle  eggonomigal.  Idt's  jeaper 
to  stay  in  pedt  sometimes  as  to  geep  a  fire  a-goin' 
all  the  time.  Don't  wandt  to  gome  too  hardt  on  the 
'bvafer  Mann,  you  know  : 

"  Braver  Mann,  er  schafft  mir  zu  essen." 

You  remember  ?     Heine  ?     You  readt  Heine  still  1 
Who  is  your  favourite  boet  now,  Passil  ?    You  write 
11* 


250        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

some  boetry  yourself  yet  1  No  1  "Well,  I  am  gladt 
to  zee  you.  Brush  those  baperss  off  of  that  jair. 
Well,  idt  is  goodt  for  zore  eyess.  How  didt  you 
findt  where  I  lif  1 " 

"  They  told  me  at  Maroni's,"  said  March.  He 
tried  to  keep  his  eyes  on  Lindau's  face,  and  not  see 
the  discomfort  of  the  room,  but  he  was  aware  of 
the  shabby  and  frowsy  bedding,  the  odour  of  stale 
smoke,  and  the  pipes  and  tobacco  shreds  mixed 
with  the  books  and  manuscripts  strewn  over  the  leaf 
of  the  writing-desk.  He  laid  down  on  the  mass  the 
pile  of  foreign  magazines  he  had  brought  under  his 
arm.  "  They  gave  me  another  address  first." 

"Yes.  I  have  chust  gome  here,"  said  Lindau. 
"  Idt  is  not  very  cay,  heigh  1 " 

"  It  might  be  gayer,"  March  admitted,  with  a 
smile.  "  Still,"  he  added  soberly,  "  a  good  many 
people  seem  to  live  in  this  part  of  the  town.  Appa- 
rently they  die  here  too,  Lindau.  There  is  crape  on 
your  ojitside  door.  I  didn't  know  but  it  was  for  you." 

"  Xodt  this  time,"  said  Lindau,  in  the  same 
humour.  "  Berhaps  some  other  time.  We  geep  the 
ondertakers  bretty  pusy  down  here." 

"Well,"  said  March,  "undertakers  must  live,  even 
if  the  rest  of  us  have  to  die  to  let  them."  Lindau 
laughed,  and  March  went  on  :  "  But  I  'm  glad  it 
isn't  your  funeral,  Lindau.  And  you  say  you  're  not 
sick,  and  so  I  don't  see  why  we  shouldn't  come  to 
business." 

"  Pusiness  1 "  Lindau  lifted  his  eyebrows.  "  You 
gome  on  pusiness  1 " 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  251 

"And  pleasure  combined,"  said  March,  and  he 
went  on  to  explain  the  service  he  desired  at 
Lindau's  hands. 

The  old  man  listened  with  serious  attention,  and 
with  assenting  nods  that  culminated  in  a  spoken 
expression  of  his  willingness  to  undertake  the  trans- 
lations. March  waited  with  a  sort  of  mechanical 
expectation  of  his  gratitude  for  the  work  put  in  his 
way,  but  nothing  of  the  kind  came  from  Lindau, 
and  March  was  left  to  say,  "  Well,  everything  is 
understood,  then  ;  and  I  don't  know  that  I  need 
add  that  if  you  ever  want  any  little  advance  on  the 
work " 

"  I  will  ask  you,"  said  Lindau  quietly,  "  and  I 
thank  you  for  that.  But  I  can  wait ;  I  ton't  needt 
any  money  just  at  bresent."  As  if  he  saw  some 
appeal  for  greater  frankness  in  March's  eye,  he  went 
on  :  "I  tidn't  gome  here  begause  I  was  too  boor  to 
lif  anywhere  else,  and  I  ton't  stay  in  pedt  begause 
I  couldn't  haf  a  fire  to  geep  warm  if  I  wanted  it- 
I  'm  nodt  zo  padt  off  as  Marmontel  when  he  went  to 
Paris,  i  'in  a  lidtle  loaxurious,  that  is  all.  If  I  stay 
in  pedt  it 's  zo  I  can  fling  money  away  on  some- 
things else.  Heigh  1 " 

"  But  what  are  you  living  here  for,  Lindau  ? " 
March  smiled  at  the  irony  lurking  in  Lindau's 
words. 

"  Well,  you  zee,  I  foundt  I  was  begoming  a  lidtle 
too  moch  of  an  aristograt.  I  hadt  a  room  oap  in 
Creenvidge  Willage,  among  dose  pig  pugs  over  on 
the  west  side,  and  I  foundt" — Lindau's  voice  lost 


252  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

its  jesting  quality,  and  his  face  darkened — "  that  I 
was  beginning  to  forget  the  boor  ! " 

"  I  should  have  thought,"  said  March,  with  im- 
partial interest,  "  that  you  might  have  seen  poverty 
enough,  now  and  then,  in  Greenwich  Village  to 
remind  you  of  its  existence." 

"  Nodt  like  here,"  said  Lindau.  "  Andt  you  must 
zee  it  all  the  dtime — zee  it,  hear  it,  smell  it,  dtaste 
it — or  you  forget  it.  That  is  what  I  gome  here  for. 
I  was  begoming  a  ploated  aristograt.  I  thought  I 
was  nodt  like  these  beople  down  here,  when  I  gome 
down  once  to  look  aroundt;  I  thought  I  must  be 
somethings  else,  and  zo  I  zaid  I  better  take  myself 
in  time,  and  I  gome  here  among  my  brothers — the 
beccars  and  the  thiefs  ! "  A  noise  made  itself  heard 
in  the  next  room,  as  if  the  door  were  furtively 
opened,  and  a  faint  sound  of  tiptoeing  and  of  hands 
clawing  on  a  table.  "  Thiefs  ! "  Lindau  repeated, 
with  a  shout.  "Lidtle  thiefs,  that  gabture  your 
breakfast.  Ah  !  ha  !  ha  ! "  A  wild  scurrying  of 
feet,  joyous  cries  and  tittering,  and  a  slamming  door 
followed  upon  his  explosion,  and  he  resumed  in  the 
silence:  "Idtis  the  children  cot  pack  from  school. 
They  gome  and  steal  what  I  leaf  there  on  my  daple. 
Idt  's  one  of  our  lidtle  chokes  ;  we  onderstand  each 
other;  that's  all  righdt.  Once  the  goppler  in  the 
other  room  there  he  used  to  chase  'em ;  he  couldn't 
onderstand  their  lidtle  tricks.  Now  dot  goppler's 
teadt,  and  he  ton't  chase  'em  any  more.  He  was  a 
Bohemian.  Gindt  of  grazy,  I  cuess." 

"  Well,  it 's  a  sociable  existence,"  March  suggested. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  253 

"But  perhaps  if  you  Ijet  them  have  the  things 
without  stealing — 

"  Oh  no,  no  !  Most  nodt  mage  them  too  gonceitedt. 
They  mostn't  go  and  feel  themselfs  petter  than 
those  boor  millionairss  that  hadt  to  steal  their 
money." 

March  smiled  indulgently  at  his  old  friend's  vio- 
lence.  "Oh,  there  are  fagots  and  fagots,  you 
know,  Lindau ;  perhaps  not  all  the  millionaires 
are  so  guilty." 

"  Let  us  speak  German,"  cried  Lindau,  in  his  own 
tongue,  pushing  his  book  aside,  and  thrusting  his 
skull-cap  back  from  his  forehead.  "  How  much 
money  can  a  man  honestly  earn  without  wronging 
or  oppressing  some  other  man  ? " 

"  Well,  if  you  '11  let  me  answer  in  English,"  said 
March,  "  I  should  say  about  five  thousand  dollars  a 
year.  I  name  that  figure  because  it 's  my  experience 
that  I  never  could  earn  more  ;  but  the  experience  of 
other  men  may  be  different,  and  if  they  tell  me  they 
can  earn  ten,  or  twenty,  or  fifty  thousand  a  year, 
I'm  not  prepared  to  say  they  can't  do  it." 

Lindau  hardly  waited  for  his  answer.  "  Not  the 
most  gifted  man  that  ever  lived,  in  the  practice  of 
any  art  or  science,  and  paid  at  the  highest  rate  that 
exceptional  genius  could  justly  demand  from  those 
who  have  worked  for  their  money,  could  ever  earn  a 
million  dollars.  It  is  the  landlords  and  the  merchant 
princes,  the  railroad  kings  and  the  coal  barons  (the 
oppressors  to  whom  you  instinctively  give  the  titles  of 
tyrants) — it  is  these  that  make  the  millions,  but  no 


254  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

man  earns  them.  What  artist,  what  physician,  what 
scientist,  what  poet  was  ever  a  millionaire  1 " 

"I  can  only  think  of  the  poet  Rogers,"  said  March, 
amused  by  Lindau's  tirade.  "  But  he  was  as  excep- 
tional as  the  other  Rogers,  the  martyr,  who  died 
with  warm  feet."  Lindau  had  apparently  not  under- 
stood his  joke,  and  he  went  on,  with  the  American 
ease  of  mind  about  everything :  "  But  you  must 
allow,  Lindau,  that  some  of  those  fellows  don't  do 
so  badly  with  their  guilty  gains.  Some  of  them 
give  work  to  armies  of  poor  people — 

Lindau  furiously  interrupted.  "  Yes,  when  they 
have  gathered  their  millions  together  from  the 
hunger  and  cold  and  nakedness  and  ruin  and 
despair  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  other  men,  they 
'  give  work '  to  the  poor  !  They  give  work  !  They 
allow  their  helpless  brothers  to  earn  enough  to  keep 
life  in  them  !  They  give  work !  Who  is  it  gives  toil, 
and  where  will  your  rich  men  be  when  once  the 
poor  shall  refuse  to  give  toil  ?  Why,  you  have  come 
to  give  me  work  ! " 

March  laughed  outright.  "  Well,  I  'm  not  a 
millionaire,  anyway,  Lindau,  and  I  hope  you  won't 
make  an  example  of  me  by  refusing  to  give  toil.  I 
dare  say  the  millionaires  deserve  it,  but  I  'd  rather 
they  wouldn't  suffer  in  my  person." 

"  No,"  returned  the  old  man,  mildly  relaxing  the 
fierce  glare  he  had  bent  upon  March.  "No  man 
deserves  to  suffer  at  the  hands  of  another.  I  lose 
myself  when  I  think  of  the  injustice  in  the  world. 
But  I  must  not  forget  that  I  am  like  the  worst  of 
them." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  255 

"  You  might  go  up  Fifth  Avenue  and  live  among 
the  rich  awhile,  when  you're  in  danger  of  that," 
suggested  March.  "  At  any  rate,"  he  added,  by  an 
impulse  which  he  knew  he  could  not  justify  to  his 
wife,  "I  wish  you  'd  come  some  day  and  lunch  with 
their  emissary.  I  've  been  telling  Mrs.  March  about 
you,  and  I  want  her  and  the  children  to  see  you. 
Come  over  with  these  things  and  report."  He  put 
his  hand  on  the  magazines  as  he  rose. 

"I  will  come,"  said  Lindau  gently. 

"  Shall  I  give  you  your  book  ? "  asked  March. 

"  No  ;  I  gidt  oap  bretty  soon." 

"  And — and — can  you  dress  yourself  1  " 

"  I  vhistle,  and  one  of  those  lidtle  fellowss  comess. 
We  haf  to  dake  gare  of  one  another  in  a  blace  like 
this.  Idt  iss  nodt  like  the  worldt,"  said  Lindau 
gloomily 

March  thought  he  ought  to  cheer  him  up.  "  Oh, 
it  isn't  such  a  bad  world,  Lindau  !  After  all,  the 
average  of  millionaires  is  small  in  it."  He  added, 
"  And  I  don't  believe  there 's  an  American  living 
that  could  look  at  that  arm  of  yours  and  not  wish 
to  lend  you  a  hand  for  the  one  you  gave  us  all." 
March  felt  this  to  be  a  fine  turn,  and  his  voice 
trembled  slightly  in  saying  it. 

Lindau  smiled  grimly.  "  You  think  zo  1  I 
wouldn't  moch  like  to  drost  'em.  I've  driedt  idt 
too  often."  He  began  to  speak  German  again 
fiercely  :  "  Besides,  they  owe  me  nothing.  Do  you 
think  I  knowingly  gave  my  hand  to  save  this 
oligarchy  of  traders  and  tricksters,  this  aristocracy 


256  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

of  railroad  wreckers  and  stock  gamblers  and  mine- 
slave  drivers  and  mill-serf  owners  1  No  ;  I  gave  it 
to  the  slave ;  the  slave — ha  !  ha !  ha  ! — whom  I 
helped  to  unshackle  to  the  common  liberty  of 
hunger  and  cold.  And  you  think  I  would  be  the 
beneficiary  of  such  a  state  of  things  1" 

"I'm  sorry  to  hear  you  talk  so,  Lindau,"  said 
March  ;  "very  sorry."  He  stopped  with  a  look  of 
pain,  and  rose  to  go.  Lindau  suddenly  broke  into 
a  laugh  and  into  English. 

"  Oh,  well,  it  is  only  dalk,  Passil,  and  it  toes  me 
goodt.  My  parg  is  worse  than  my  pidte,  I  cuess. 
I  pring  these  things  roundt  bretty  soon.  Good-bye, 
Passil,  my  tear  poy.  Auf  iciedersehen  /  " 


XIII. 

MARCH  went  away  thinking  of  what  Lindau  had 
said,  but  not  for  the  impersonal  significance  of  his 
words  so  much  as  for  the  light  they  cast  upon 
Lindau  himself.  He  thought  the  words  violent 
enough,  but  in  connection  with  what  he  remembered 
of  the  cheery,  poetic,  hopeful  idealist,  they  were 
even  more  curious  than  lamentable.  In  his  own  life 
of  comfortable  reverie  he  had  never  heard  any  one 
talk  so  before,  but  he  had  read  something  of  the 
kind  now  and  then  in  blatant  labour  newspapers 
which  he  had  accidentally  fallen  in  with,  and  once  at 
a  strikers'  meeting  he  had  heard  rich  people  de- 
nounced with  the  same  frenzy.  He  had  made  his 
own  reflections  upon  the  tastelessness  of  the  rhetoric, 
and  the  obvious  buncombe  of  the  motive,  and  he 
had  not  taken  the  matter  seriously. 

He  could  not  doubt  Lindau's  sincerity,  and  he 
wondered  how  he  came  to  that  way  of  thinking. 
From  his  experience  of  himself  he  accounted  for  a 
prevailing  literary  quality  in  it ;  he  decided  it  to  be 
from  Lindau's  reading  and  feeling  rather  than  his 
reflection.  That  was  the  notion  he  formed  of  some 


258  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

things  he  had  met  with  in  Euskin  to  much  the  same 
effect;  he  regarded  them  with  amusement  as  the 
chimeras  of  a  rhetorician  run  away  with  by  his 
phrases. 

But  as  to  Lindau,  the  chief  thing  in  his  mind  was 
a  conception  of  the  droll  irony  of  a  situation  in 
which  so  fervid  a  hater  of  millionaires  should  be 
working,  indirectly  at  least,  for  the  prosperity  of  a 
man  like  Dryfoos,  who,  as  March  understood,  had 
got  his  money  together  out  of  every  gambler's 
chance  in  speculation,  and  all  a  schemer's  thrift 
from  the  error  and  need  of  others.  The  situation 
was  not  more  incongruous,  however,  than  all  the 
rest  of  the  Every  Other  Week  affair.  It  seemed  to 
him  that  there  were  no  crazy  fortuities  that  had  not 
tended  to  its  existence,  and  as  time  went  on,  and 
the  day  drew  near  for  the  issue  of  the  first  number, 
the  sense  of  this  intensified  till  the  whole  lost  at 
moments  the  quality  of  a  waking  fact,  and  came  to 
be  rather  a  fantastic  fiction  of  sleep. 

Yet  the  heterogeneous  forces  did  co-operate  to 
a  reality  which  March  could  not  deny,  at  least  in 
their  presence,  and  the  first  number  was  representa- 
tive of  all  their  nebulous  intentions  in  a  tangible 
form.  As  a  result,  it  was  so  respectable  that 
March  began  to  respect  these  intentions,  began 
to  respect  himself  for  combining  and  embodying 
them  in  the  volume  which  appealed  to  him  with 
a  novel  fascination,  when  the  first  advance  copy 
was  laid  upon  his  desk.  Every  detail  of  it  was 
tiresomely  familiar  already,  but  the  whole  had  a 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        259 

fresh  interest  now.  He  now  saw  how  extremely 
fit  and  effective  Miss  Leighton's  decorative  design 
for  the  cover  was,  printed  in  black  and  brick-red  on 
the  delicate  grey  tone  of  the  paper.  It  was  at  once 
attractive  and  refined,  and  he  credited  Beaton  with 
quite  all  he  merited  in  working  it  over  to  the  actual 
shape.  The  touch  and  the  taste  of  the  art  editor 
were  present  throughout  the  number.  As  Fulker- 
son  said,  Beaton  had  caught  on  with  the  delicacy  of 
a  humming-bird  and  the  tenacity  of  a  bull-dog  to 
the  virtues  of  their  illustrative  process,  and  had 
worked  it  for  all  it  was  worth.  There  were  seven 
papers  in  the  number,  and  a  poem  on  the  last  page 
of  the  cover,  and  he  had  found  some  graphic  com- 
ment for  each.  It  was  a  larger  proportion  than 
would  afterward  be  allowed,  but  for  once  in  a  way 
it  was  allowed.  Fulkerson  said  they  could  not  expect 
to  get  their  money  back  on  that  first  number  anyway. 
Seven  of  the  illustrations  were  Beaton's ;  two  or  three 
he  got  from  practised  hands ;  the  rest  were  the 
work  of  unknown  people  which  he  had  suggested, 
and  then  related  and  adapted  with  unfailing  in- 
genuity to  the  different  papers.  He  handled  the 
illustrations  with  such  sympathy  as  not  to  destroy 
their  individual  quality,  and  that  indefinable 
charm  which  comes  from  good  amateur  work  in 
whatever  art.  He  rescued  them  from  their  weak- 
nesses and  errors,  while  he  left  in  them  the  evi- 
dence of  the  pleasure  with  which  a  clever  young 
man,  or  a  sensitive  girl,  or  a  refined  woman  had 

done    them.      Inevitably    from    his    manipulation, 

S 


260  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

however,  the  art  of  the  number  acquired  homo- 
geneity, and  there  was  nothing  casual  in  its  ap- 
pearance. The  result,  March  eagerly  owned,  was 
better  than  the  literary  result,  and  he  foresaw  that 
the  number  would  be  sold  and  praised  chiefly  for 
its  pictures.  Yet  he  was  not  ashamed  of  the  litera- 
ture, and  he  indulged  his  admiration  of  it  the  more 
freely  because  he  had  not  only  not  written  it,  but 
in  a  way  had  not  edited  it.  To  be  sure,  he  had 
chosen  all  the  material,  but  he  had  not  voluntarily 
put  it  all  together  for  that  number  ;  it  had  largely 
put  itself  together,  as  every  number  of  every 
magazine  does,  and  as  it  seems  more  and  more  to 
do,  in  the  experience  of  every  editor.  There  had  to 
be,  of  course,  a  story,  and  then  a  sketch  of  travel. 
There  was  a  literary  essay  and  a  social  essay  ;  there 
was  a  dramatic  trifle,  very-  gay,  very  light ;  there 
was  a  dashing  criticism  on  the  new  pictures,  the  new 
plays,  the  new  books,  the  new  fashions  ;  and  then 
there  was  the  translation  of  a  bit  of  vivid  Russian 
realism,  which  the  editor  owed  to  Lindau's  explora- 
tion of  the  foreign  periodicals  left  with  him  ;  Lindau 
was  himself  a  romanticist  of  the  Victor  Hugo  sort, 
but  he  said  this  fragment  of  Dostoyevski  was  good 
of  its  kind.  The  poem  was  a  bit  of  society  verse, 
with  a  backward  look  into  simpler  and  wholesomer 
experiences. 

Fulkerson  was  .extremely  proud  of  the  number; 
but  he  said  it  was  too  good — too  good  from  every 
point  of  view.  The  cover  was  too  good,  and  the 
paper  was  too  good,  and  that  device  of  rough  edges, 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        261 

which  got  over  the  objection  to  uncut  leaves  while  it 
secured  their  aesthetic  effect,  was  a  thing  that  he 
trembled  for,  though  he  rejoiced  in  it  as  a  stroke  of 
the  highest  genius.  It  had  come  from  Beaton  at 
the  last  moment,  as  a  compromise,  when  the  problem, 
of  the  vulgar  croppiness  of  cut  leaves  and  the 
unpopularity  of  uncut  leaves  seemed  to  have  no 
solution  but  suicide.  Fulkerson  was  still  morally 
crawling  round  on  his  hands  and  knees,  as  he  said, 
in  abject  gratitude  at  Beaton's  feet,  though  he  had 
his  qualms,  his  questions ;  and  he  declared  that 
Beaton  was  the  most  inspired  ass  since  Balaam's. 
"  We  're  all  asses,  of  course,"  he  admitted,  in  semi- 
apology  to  March ;  "  but  we  're  no  such  asses  as 
Beaton."  He  said  that  if  the  tasteful  decorativeness 
of  the  thing  did  not  kill  it  with  the  public  outright, 
its  literary  excellence  would  give  it  the  finishing 
stroke.  Perhaps  that  might  be  overlooked  in  the 
impression  of  novelty  which  a  first  number  would 
give,  but  it  must  never  happen  again.  He  implored 
March  to  promise  that  it  should  never  happen  again ; 
he  said  their  only  hope  was  in  the  immediate 
cheapening  of  the  whole  affair.  It  was  bad  enough 
to  gire  the  public  too  much  quantity  for  their 
money,  but  to  throw  in  such  quality  as  that  was 
simply  ruinous;  it  must  be  stopped.  These  were 
the  expressions  of  his  intimate  moods ;  every  front 
that  he  presented  to  the  public  wore  a  glow  of  lofty, 
of  devout  exultation.  His  pride  in  the  number 
gushed  out  in  fresh  bursts  of  rhetoric  to  every  one 
whom  he  could  get  to  talk  with  him  about  it.  He 


262        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

worked  the  personal  kindliness  of  the  press  to  the 
utmost.  He  did  not  mind  making  himself  ridiculous 
or  becoming  a  joke  in  the  good  cause,  as  he  called  it. 
He  joined  in  the  applause  when  a  humorist  at  the 
club  feigned  to  drop  dead  from  his  chair  at  Fulker- 
son's  introduction  of  the  topic,  and  he  went  on  talk- 
ing that  first  number  into  the  surviving  spectators. 
He  stood  treat  upon  all  occasions,  and  he  lunched 
attaches  of  the  press  at  all  hours.  He  especially 
befriended  the  correspondents  of  the  newspapers  of 
other  cities,  for,  as  he  explained  to  March,  those 
fellows  could  give  him  any  amount  of  advertising 
simply  as  literary  gossip.  Many  of  the  fellows 
were  ladies  who  could  not  be  so  summarily  asked 
out  to  lunch,  but  Fulkerson's  ingenuity  was  equal  to 
every  exigency,  and  he  contrived  somehow  to 
make  each  of  these  feel  that  she  had  been  possessed 
of  exclusive  information.  There  was  a  moment 
when  March. conjectured  a  willingness  in  Fulker- 
son  to  work  Mrs.  March  into  the  advertising  depart- 
ment, by  means  of  a  tea  to  these  ladies  and  their 
friends  which  she  should  administer  in  his  apart- 
ment, but  he  did  not  encourage  Fulkerson  to  be 
explicit,  and  the  moment  passed.  Afterward,  when 
he  told  his  wife  about  it,  he  was  astonished  to  find 
that  she  would  not  have  minded  doing  it  for  Ful- 
kerson, and  he  experienced  another  proof  of  the 
bluntness  of  the  feminine  instincts  in  some  direc- 
tions, and  of  the  personal  favour  which  Fulkerson 
seemed  to  enjoy  with  the  whole  sex.  This  alone 
was  enough  to  account  for  the  willingness  of  these 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        263 

correspondents  to  write  about  the  first  number,  but 
March  accused  him  of  sending  it  to  their  addresses 
with  boxes  of  Jacqueminot  roses  and  Huyler  candy. 

Fulkerson  let  him  enjoy  his  joke.  He  said  that 
he  would  do  that  or  anything  else  for  the  good 
cause,  short  of  marrying  the  whole  circle  of  female 
correspondents. 

March  Avas  inclined  to  hope  that  if  the  first 
number  had  been  made  too  good  for  the  country  at 
large,  the  more  enlightened  taste  of  metropolitan 
journalism  would  invite  a  compensating  favour  for 
it  in  New  York.  But  first  Fulkerson  and  then  the 
event  proved  him  wrong.  In  spite  of  the  quality  of 
the  magazine,  and  in  spite  of  the  kindness  which  so 
many  newspaper  men  felt  for  Fulkerson,  the  notices 
in  the  New  York  papers  seemed  grudging  and  pro- 
visional to  the  ardour  of  the  editor.  A  merit  in  the 
work  was  acknowledged,  and  certain  defects  in  it 
for  which  March  had  trembled  were  ignored  ;  but 
the  critics  astonished  him  by  selecting  for  censure 
points  which  he  was  either  proud  of  or  had  never 
noticed ;  which  being  now  brought  to  his  notice 
he  still  could  not  feel  were  faults.  He  owned  to 
Fulkerson  that  if  they  had  said  so  and  so  against  it, 
he  could  have  agreed  with  them,  but  that  to  say 
thus  and  so  was  preposterous ;  and  that  if  the 
advertising  had  not  been  adjusted  with  such  generous 
recognition  of  the  claims  of  the  different  papers, 
he  should  have  known  the  counting-room  was 
at  the  bottom  of  it.  As  it  was,  he  could  only 
attribute  it  to  perversity  or  stupidity.  It  was 


264  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

certainly  stupid  to  condemn  a  magazine  novelty 
like  Every  Other  Week  for  being  novel ;  and  to 
augur  that  if  it  failed,  it  would  fail  through  its 
departure  from  the  lines  on  which  all  the  other 
prosperous  magazines  had  been  built,  was  in  the 
last  degree  perverse,  and  it  looked  malicious.  The 
fact  that  it  was  neither  exactly  a  book  nor  a 
magazine  ought  to  be  for  it  and  not  against  it,  since 
it  would  invade  no  other  field ;  it  would  prosper  on 
no  ground  but  its  own. 


XIV. 

THE  more  March  thought  of  the  injustice  of 
the  New  York  press  (which  had  not,  however, 
attacked  the  literary  quality  of  the  number)  the 
more  bitterly  he  resented  it ;  and  his  wife's  indigna- 
tion superheated  his  own.  Every  Other  Week  had 
become  a  very  personal  affair  with  the  whole  family ; 
the  children  shared  their  parents'  disgust ;  Bella 
was  outspoken  in  her  denunciations  of  a  venal  press. 
Mrs.  March  saw  nothing  but  ruin  ahead,  and  began 
tacitly  to  plan  a  retreat  to  Boston,  and  an  establish- 
ment retrenched  to  the  basis  of  two  thousand  a 
year.  She  shed  some  secret  tears  in  anticipation 
of  the  privations  which  this  must  involve ;  but 
when  Fulkerson  came  to  see  March  rather  late  the 
night  of  the  publication  day,  she  nobly  told  him 
that  if  the  worst  came  to  the  worst  she  could  only 
have  the  kindliest  feeling  toward  him,  and  should 
not  regard  him  as  in  the  slightest  degree  responsible. 

"  Oh,  hold  on,  hold  on  ! "  he  protested.  "  You 
don't  think  we  Ve  made  a  failure,  do  you  ? " 

"Why,  of  course,"  she  faltered,  while  March  re- 
mained gloomily  silent. 

"  Well,  I  guess  we  '11  wait  for  the  official  count, , 
VOL.  I.— 12 


266  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

first.  Even  New  York  hasn't  gone  against  us,  and 
I  guess  there 's  a  majority  coming  down  to  Harlem 
River  that  could  sweep  everything  before  it,  anyway." 

"  What  do  you  mean,  Fulkerson  1 "  March  de- 
manded sternly. 

"  Oh,  nothing !  Only,  the  News  Company  has 
ordered  ten  thousand  now ;  and  you  know  we  had 
to  give  them  the  first  twenty  on  commission." 

"  What  do  you  mean  1 "  March  repeated ;  his  wife 
held  her  breath. 

"I  mean  that  the  first  number  is  a  booming 
success  already,  and  that  it 's  going  to  a  hundred 
thousand  before  it  stops.  That  unanimity  and 
variety  of  censure  in  the  morning  papers,  combined 
with  the  attractiveness  of  the  thing  itself,  has 
cleared  every  stand  in  the  city,  and  now  if  the  favour 
of  the  country  press  doesn't  turn  the  tide  against  us, 
our  fortune's  made."  The  Marches  remained  dumb. 
"  Why,  look  here  !  Didn't  I  tell  you  those  criticisms 
would  be  the  making  of  us,  when  they  first  began  to 
turn  you  blue  this  morning,  March  ? " 

"He  came  home  to  lunch  perfectly  sick,"  said  Mrs. 
March  ;  "  and  I  wouldn't  let  him  go  back  again." 

"  Didn't  I  tell  you  so  ? "  Fulkerson  persisted. 

March  could  not  remember  that  he  had,  or  that 
he  had  been  anything  but  incoherently  and  hysteric- 
ally jocose  over  the  papers,  but  he  said,  "  Yes,  yes — 
I  think  so." 

"  I  knew  it  from  the  start,"  said  Fulkerson.  "  The 
only  other  person  who  took  those  criticisms  in  the 
right  spirit  was  Mother  Dryfoos — I've  just  been 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        267 

bolstering  up  the  Dryfoos  family.  She  had  them, 
fead  to  her  by  Mrs.  Mandel,  and  she  understood 
them  to  be  all  the  most  flattering  prophecies  of 
success.  Well,  I  didn't  read  between  the  lines  to 
that  extent,  quite ;  but  I  saw  that  they  were  going 

1  to  help  us,  if  there  was  anything  in  us,  more  than 
anything  that  could  have  been  done.  And  there 
was  something  in  us  !  I  tell  you,  March,  that  seven- 
shooting  self-cocking  donkey  of  a  Beaton  has  given 
us  the  greatest  start !  He 's  caught  on  like  a  mice. 
He 's  made  the  thing  awfully  cJiic ;  it 's  jimmy ; 
there 's  lots  of  dog  about  it.  He 's  managed  that 
process  so  that  the  illustrations  look  as  expensive  as 
first-class  wood-cuts,  and  they're  cheaper  than 
chromos.  He  's  put  style  into  the  whole  thing." 

"  Oh  yes,"  said  March  with  eager  meekness,  "  it 's 
Beaton  that's  done  it." 

Fulkerson  read  jealousy  of  Beaton  in  Mrs.  March's 
face.  "  Beaton  has  given  us  the  start  because  his 
work  appeals  to  the  eye.  There 's  no  denying  that 
the  pictures  have  sold  this  first  number;  but  I 
expect  the  literature  of  this  first  number  to  sell  the 
pictures  of  the  second.  I  've  been  reading  it  all  over, 
nearly,  since  I  found  how  the  cat  was  jumping;  I 
was  anxious  about  it,  and  I  tell  you,  old  man,  it's 
good.  Yes,  sir  !  I  was  afraid  may  be  you  had  got  it 
too  good,  with  that  Boston  refinement  of  yours ;  but 
I  reckon  you  haven't.  1 11  risk  it.  I  don't  see  how 
you  got  so  much  variety  into  so  few  things,  and  all 
of  them  palpitant,  all  of  'em  on  the  keen  jump  with 

^actuality." 


268  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

The  mixture  of  American  slang  with  the  jargon 
of  European  criticism  in  Fulkerson's  talk  made  March 
smile,  but  his  wife  did  not  seem  to  notice  it  in  her 
exultation.  "  That  is  just  what  I  say,"  she  broke  in. 
"  It 's  perfectly  wonderful.  I  never  was  anxious 
about  it  a  moment,  except,  as  you  say,  Mr.  Fulker- 
son,  I  was  afraid  it  might  be  too  good.'' 

They  went  on  in  an  antiphony  of  praise  till  March 
said,  "Really,  I  don't  see  what's  left  me  but  to 
strike  for  higher  wages.  I  perceive  that  I'm 
indispensable." 

"  Why,  old  man,  you  're  coming  in  on  the  diwy, 
you  know,"  said  Fulkerson. 

They  both  laughed,  and  when  Fulkerson  was 
gone,  Mrs.  March  asked  her  husband  what  a  diwy 
was. 

"  It 's  a  chicken  before  it 's  hatched  " 

"  No  !     Truly  1 " 

He  explained,  and  she  began  to  spend  the  diwy. 

At  Mrs.  Leighton's  Fulkerson  gave  Alma  all  the 
honour  of  the  success ;  he  told  her  mother  that  the 
girl's  design  for  the  cover  had  sold  every  number, 
and  Mrs.  Leighton  believed  him. 

"Well,  Ah  think  Ah  maght  have  some  of  the 
glory,"  Miss  Woodburn  pouted.  "Where  am  Ah 
comin'  in  ? " 

"You're  coming  in  on  the  cover  of  the  next 
number,"  said  Fulkerson.  "  We  're  going  to  have 
your  face  there ;  Miss  Leighton's  going  to  sketch  it 
in."  He  said  this  reckless  of  the  fact  that  he  had 
already  shown  them  the  design  of  the  second 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        269 

number  which  was  Beaton's  weird  bit  of  gas-country 
landscape. 

"Ah  don't  see  why  you  don't  wrahte  the  fiction 
for  your  magazine,  Mr.  Fulkerson,"  said  the  girl. 

This  served  to  remind  Fulkerson  of  something. 
He  turned  to  her  father.  "I'll  tell  you  what, 
Colonel  Woodburn,  I  want  Mr.  March  to  see  some 
chapters  of  that  book  of  yours.  I  've  been  talking 
to  him  about  it." 

"  I  do  not  think  it  would  add  to  the  popularity 
of  your  periodical,  sir,"  said  the  Colonel,  with  a 
stately  pleasure  in  being  asked.  "My  views  of  a 
civilisation  based  upon  responsible  slavery  would 
hardly  be  acceptable  to  your  commercialised  society." 

"Well,  not  as  a  practical  thing,  of  course," 
Fulkerson  admitted.  "But  as  something  retro- 
spective, speculative,  I  believe  it  would  make  a  hit. 
There's  so  much  going  on  now  about  social  ques- 
tions; I  guess  people  would  like  to  read  it." 

"  I  do  not  know  that  my  work  is  intended  to 
amuse  people,"  said  the  Colonel,  with  some  state. 

"Mah  goodness!  Ah  only  wish  it  was,  then," 
said  his  daughter;  and  she  added:  "Yes,  Mr. 
Fulkerson,  the  Colonel  will  be  very  glad  to  submit 
po'tions  of  his  woak  to  yo'  edito'.  We  want  to  have 
some  of  the  honaw.  Perhaps  we  can  say  we  helped 
to  stop  yo'  magazine,  if  we  didn't  help  to  stawt  it." 

They  all  laughed  at  her  boldness,  and  Fulkerson 
said,  "  It  '11  take  a  good  deal  more  than  that  to  stop 
Every  Other  Week.  The  Colonel's  whole  book 
couldn't  do  it."  Then  he  looked  unhappy,  for 


270  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

Colonel  Woodburn  did  not  seem  to  enjoy  his  re- 
assuring words ;  but  Miss  Woodburn  came  to  his 
rescue.  "  You  maght  illustrate  it  with  the  po'trait  of 
the  awthor's  daughtaw,  if  it's  too  late  for  the  covah." 

"Going  to  have  that  in  every  number,  Miss 
Woodburn,"  he  cried. 

"  Oh,  mah  goodness ! "  she  said,  with  mock 
humility. 

Alma  sat  looking  at  her  piquant  head,  black, 
unconsciously  outlined  against  the  lamp,  as  she  sat 
working  by  the  table.  "  Just  keep  still  a  moment!" 

She  got  her  sketch-block  and  pencils,  and  began 
to  draw;  Fulkerson  tilted  himself  forward  and 
looked  over  her  shoulder ;  he  smiled  outwardly ; 
inwardly  he  was  divided  between  admiration  of 
Miss  Woodburn's  arch  beauty  and  appreciation  of 
the  skill  which  reproduced  it ;  at  the  same  time 
he  was  trying  to  remember  whether  March  had 
authorised  him  to  go  so  far  as  to  ask  for  a  sight 
of  Colonel  Woodburn's  manuscript.  He  felt  that 
he  had  trenched  upon  March's  province,  and  he 
framed  one  apology  to  the  editor  for  bringing  him 
the  manuscript,  and  another  to  the  author  for 
bringing  it  back 

"Most  Ah  hold  raght  still  like  it  was  a  photo- 
graph ? "  asked  Miss  Woodburn,  "  Can  Ah  toak  ?  * 

"Talk  all  you  want,"  said  Alma,  squinting  her 
eyes.  "  And  you  needn't  be  either  adamantine,  nor 
yet — wooden." 

"  Oh,  ho'  very  good  of  you !  Well,  if  Ah  can 
toak — go  on,  Mr.  Fulkerson ! " 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       271 

"  Me  talk  ?  I  can't  breathe  till  this  thing  is 
done ! "  sighed  Fulkerson ;  at  that  point  of  his 
mental '  drama  the  Colonel  was  behaving  rustily 
about  the  return  of  his  manuscript,  and  he  felt  that 
he  was  looking  his  last  on  Miss  Woodburn's  profile. 

"  Is  she  getting  it  raght  ?  "  asked  the  girl. 

"  I  don't  know  which  is  which,"  said  Fulkerson. 

"  Oh,  Ah  hope  Ah  shall !  I  don't  want  to  go 
round  feelin'  like  a  sheet  of  papah  half  the  time." 

"  You  could  rattle  on,  just  the  same,"  suggested 
Alma. 

"  Oh,  now !  Jost  listen  to  that,  Mr.  Fulkerson. 
Do  you  call  that  any  way  to  toak  to  people  ? " 

"  You  might  know  which  you  were  by  the 
colour,"  Fulkerson  began,  and  then  he  broke  off 
from  the  personal  consideration  with  a  business 
inspiration,  and  smacked  himself  on  the  knee :  "  We 
could  print  it  in  colour  ! " 

Mrs.  Leighton  gathered  up  her  sewing  and  held 
it  with  both  hands  in  her  lap,  while  she  came  round, 
and  looked  critically  at  the  sketch  and  the  model 
over  her  glasses.  "  It 's  very  good,  Alma,"  she  said. 

Colonel  Woodburn  remained  restively  on  his  side 
of  the  table.  "  Of  course,  Mr.  Fulkerson,  you  were 
jesting,  sir,  when  you  spoke  of  printing  a  sketch  of 
my  daughter." 

"Why,  I  don't  know If  you  object " 

"  I  do,  sir — decidedly,"  said  the  Colonel. 

"  Then  that  settles  it,  of  course,"  said  Fulkerson. 
"  I  only  meant " 

"  Indeed  it  doesn't ! "  cried  the  girl.     "  Who 's  to 


272  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

know  who  it 's  from  ?  Ah  'm  jost  set  on  havin*  it 
printed  !  Ah  'm  going  to  appear  as  the  head  of 
Slavery — in  opposition  to  the  head  of  Liberty." 

"  There  '11  be  a  revolution  inside  of  forty-eight 
hours,  and  we  '11  have  the  Colonel's  system  going 
wherever  a  copy  of  Every  Other  Week  circulates," 
said  Fulkerson. 

"This  sketch  belongs  to  me,"  Alma  interposed. 
"  I  'm  not  going  to  let  it  be  printed." 

"  Oh,  mah  goodness ! "  said  Miss  Woodburn, 
laughing  good-hum ouredly.  "  That 's  becose  you 
were  brought  up  to  hate  slavery." 

"  I  should  like  Mr.  Beaton  to  see  it,"  said  Mrs. 
Leighton  in  a  sort  of  absent  tone.  She  added,  to 
Fulkerson  :  "  I  rather  expected  he  might  be  in  to- 
night." 

"  Well,  if  he  comes  we  '11  leave  it  to  Beaton," 
Fulkerson  said,  with  relief  in  the  solution,  and  an 
anxious  glance  at  the  Colonel,  across  the  table,  to 
see  how  he  took  that  form  of  the  joke.  Miss 
Woodburn  intercepted  his  glance  and  laughed,  and 
Fulkerson  laughed  too,  but  rather  forlornly. 

Alma  set  her  lips  primly  and  turned  her  head 
first  on  one  side  and  then  on  the  other  to  look  at 
the  sketch.  "  I  don't  think  we  '11  leave  it  to  Mr. 
Beaton,  even  if  he  comes." 

"We  left  the  other  design  for  the  cover  to 
Beaton,"  Fulkerson  insinuated.  "  I  guess  you 
needn't  be  afraid  of  him." 

"  Is  it  a  question  of  my  being  afraid  ? "  Alma 
asked ;  she  seemed  coolly  intent  on  her  drawing. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  273 

"Miss  Leighton  thinks  he  ought  to  be  afraid  of 
her,"  Miss  Woodburn  explained. 

"  It 's  a  question  of  his  courage,  then  ? "  said  Alma. 

"Well,  I  don't  think  there  are  many  young  ladies 
that  Beaton 's  afraid  of,"  said  Fulkerson,  giving  him- 
self the  respite  of  this  purely  random  remark,  while 
he  interrogated  the  faces  of  Mrs.  Leighton  and 
Colonel  Woodburn  for  some  light  upon  the  tendency 
of  their  daughters'  words. 

He  was  not  helped  by  Mrs.  Leighton's  saying, 
with  a  certain  anxiety,  "I  don't  know  what  you 
mean,  Mr.  Fulkerson." 

"  Well,  you  're  as  much  in  the  dark  as  I  am  my- 
self, then,"  said  Fulkerson.  "I  suppose  I  meant 
that  Beaton  is  rather — a — favourite,  you  know. 
The  women  like  him." 

Mrs.  Leighton  sighed,  and  Colonel  Woodburn  rose 
and  left  the  room. 
12* 


XV. 

1  IN  the  silence  that  followed,  Fulkerson  looked 
from  one  lady  to  the  other  with  dismay.  "  I  seem  to 
have  put  my  foot  in  it,  somehow,"  he  suggested,  and 
Miss  Woodburn  gave  a  cry  of  laughter. 

"  Poo'  Mr.  Fulkerson !  Poo'  Mr.  Fulkerson ! 
Papa  thoat  you  wanted  him  to  go." 

"  Wanted  him  to  go  ? "  repeated  Fulkerson. 

"  We  always  mention  Mr.  Beaton  when  we  want 
to  get  rid  of  papa." 

"Well,  it  seems  to  me  that  I  have  noticed  that 
he  didn't  take  much  interest  in  Beaton,  as  a  general 
topic.  But  I  don't  know  that  I  ever  saw  it  drive 
him  out  of  the  room  before  ! " 

"  Well,  he  isn't  always  so  bad,"  said  Miss  Wood- 
burn.  "  But  it  was  a  case  of  hate  at  first  sight,  and 
it  seems  to  be  growin'  on  papa." 

"  Well,  I  can  understand  that,"  said  Fulkerson. 
"  The  impulse  to  destroy  Beaton  is  something  thafc 
everybody  has  to  struggle  against  at  the  start" 

"  I  must  say,  Mr.  Fulkerson,"  said  Mrs.  Leighton 
in  the  tremor  through  which  she  nerved  herself  to 
differ  openly  with  any  one  she  liked,  "I  never  had 
to  struggle  with  anything  of  the  kind,  in  regard  to 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       275 

Mr.  Beaton.  He  has  always  been  most  respectful 
and — and  considerate,  with  me,  whatever  he  has 
been  with  others." 

"  Well,  of  course,  Mrs.  Leighton  ! "  Fulkerson 
came  back  in  a  soothing  tone.  "  But  you  see  you  're 
the  rule  that  proves  the  exception.  I  was  speaking 
of  the  way  men  felt  about  Beaton.  It 's  different 
with  ladies  ;  I  just  said  so." 

"Is  it  always  different  ? "  Alma  asked,  lifting  her 
head  and  her  hand  from  her  drawing,  and  staring  at 
it  absently. 

Fulkerson  pushed  his  hands  both  through  his 
whiskers.  "  Look  here  !  Look  here  ! "  he  said. 
"  Won't  somebody  start  some  other  subject  ?  We 
haven't  had  the  weather  up  yet,  have  we  ?  Or  the 
opera  1  What  is  the  matter  with  a  few  remarks 
about  politics  ?  " 

"  Why  I  thoat  you  lahked  to  toak  about  the  staff 
of  yo'  magazine,"  said  Miss  Woodburn. 

"Oh,  I  do!"  said  Fulkerson.  "  But  not  always 
about  the  same  member  of  it.  He  gets  monotonous, 
when  he  doesn't  get  complicated.  I  Ve  just  come 
round  from  the  Marches',"  he  added,  to  Mrs.  Leighton. 

"  I  suppose  they  Ve  got  thoroughly  settled  in 
their  apartment  by  this  time."  Mrs.  Leighton  said 
something  like  this  whenever  the  Marches  were 
mentioned.  At  the  bottom  of  her  heart  she  had  not 
forgiven  them  for  not  taking  her  rooms ;  she  had 
liked  their  looks  so  much ;  and  she  was  always 
hoping  that  they  were  uncomfortable  or  dissatisfied  ; 
she  could  not  help  wanting  them  punished  a  little. 
T 


276       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"Well,  yes;  as  much  as  they  ever  will  be," 
Fulkerson  answered.  "  The  Boston  style  is  pretty 
different,  you  know;  and  the  Marches  are  old- 
fashioned  folks,  and  I  reckon  they  never  went  in 
much  for  bric-a-brac.  They  Ve  put  away  nine  or 
ten  barrels  of  dragon  candlesticks,  but  they  keep 
finding  new  ones." 

"  Their  landlady  has  just  joined  our  class,"  said 
Alma.  "  Isn't  her  name  Green  ?  She  happened  to 
see  my  copy  of  Every  Other  Week,  and  said  she  knew 
the  editor ;  and  told  me." 

"  Well,  it 's  a  little  world,"  said  Fulkerson.  "  You 
seem  to  be  touching  elbows  with  everybody.  Just 
think  of  your  having  had  our  head  translator  for  a 
model." 

"  Ah  think  that  your  whole  publication  revolves 
aroand  the  Leighton  family,"  said  Miss  Woodburn. 

"That's  pretty  much  so,"  Fulkerson  admitted. 
"  Anyhow,  the  publisher  seems  disposed  to  do  so." 

"  Are  you  the  publisher  ?  I  thought  it  was  Mr. 
Dryfoos,"  said  Alma. 

"It  is." 

"Oh!" 

The  tone  and  the  word  gave  Fulkerson  a  dis- 
comfort which  he  promptly  confessed.  "Missed 
again." 

The  girls  laughed,  and  he  regained  something  of 
his  lost  spirits,  and  smiled  upon  their  gaiety,  which 
lasted  beyond  any  apparent  reason  for  it. 

Miss  Woodburn  asked,  "And  is  Mr.  Dryfoos 
senio'  anything  like  ouah  Mr.  Dryfoos  ] " 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  277 

"Not  the  least." 

"  But  he 's  jost  as  exemplary  ?  " 

"Yes;  in  his  way." 

"  Well,  Ah  wish  Ah  could  see  all  those  pinks  of 
puffection  togethath,  once." 

"Why,  look  here !  I  've  been  thinking  I  'd  celebrate 
a  little,  when  the  old  gentleman  gets  back.  Have  a 
little  supper — something  of  that  kind.  How  would 
you  like  to  let  me  have  your  parlours  for  it,  Mrs. 
Leighton  ?  You  ladies  could  stand  on  the  stairs, 
and  have  a  peep  at  us,  in  the  bunch." 

"  Oh,  mah  !  What  a  privilege  !  And  will  Miss 
Alma  be  there,  with  the  othah  contributors  1  Ah 
shall  jost  expah  of  envy  ! " 

"She  won't  be  there  in  person,"  said  Fulkerson, 
"  but  she  '11  be  represented  by  the  head  of  the  art 
department." 

"  Mah  goodness  !  And  who  '11  the  head  of  the 
publishing  department  represent  1 " 

"  He  can  represent  you,"  said  Alma. 

"Well,  Ah  want  to  be  represented,  someho'." 

"We'll  have  the  banquet  the  night  before  you 
appear  on  the  cover  of  our  fourth  number,"  said 
Fulkerson. 

"Ah  thoat  that  was  doubly  fo'bidden,"  said  Miss 
Woodburn.  "  By  the  stern  parent  and  the  envious 
awtust." 

"  We  '11  get  Beaton  to  get  round  them,  somehow. 
I  guess  we  can  trust  him  to  manage  that." 

Mrs.  Leighton  sighed  her  resentment  of  the 
implication. 


278  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  I  always  feel  that  Mr.  Beaton  doesn't  do  him- 
self justice,"  she  began. 

Fulkerson  could  not  forego  the  chance  of  a  joke. 
"  Well,  may  be  he  would  rather  temper  justice  with 
mercy  in  a  case  like  his."  This  made  both  the 
younger  ladies  laugh.  "  I  judge  this  is  my  chance 
to  get  off  with  my  life,"  he  added,  and  he  rose  as  he 
spoke.  "  Mrs.  Leighton,  I  am  about  the  only  man 
of  my  sex  who  doesn't  thirst  for  Beaton's  blood 
most  of  the  time.  But  I  know  him  and  I  don't. 
He 's  more  kinds  of  a  good  fellow  than  people  gener- 
ally understand.  He  don't  wear  his  heart  upon  his 
sleeve — not  his  ulster  sleeve,  anyway.  You  can 
always  count  me  on  your  side  when  it 's  a  question 
of  finding  Beaton  not  guilty  if  he  '11  leave  the  State." 

Alma  set  her  drawing  against  the  wall,  in  rising 
to  say  good  night  to  Fulkerson.  He  bent  over  on 
his  stick  to  look  at  it.  "Well,  it's  beautiful,"  he 
sighed,  with  unconscious  sincerity. 

Alma  made  him  a  courtesy  of  mock  modesty. 
"  Thanks  to  Miss  Woodburn." 

"  Oh  no !  All  she  had  to  do  was  simply  to 
stay  put." 

"  Don't  you  think  Ah  might  have  improved  it  if 
Ah  had  looked  better  ? "  the  girl  asked  gravely. 

"  Oh,  you  couldn't ! "  said  Fulkerson,  and  he  went 
off  triumphant  in  their  applause  and  their  cries  of 
"Which?  which?" 

Mrs.  Leighton  sank  deep  into  an  accusing  gloom 
when  at  last  she  found  herself  alone  with  her 
daughter.  "I  don't  know  what  you  are  thinking 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       279 

about,  Alma  Leightou.  If  you  don't  like  Mr. 
Beaton " 

"I  don't." 

"  You  don't  ?  You  know  better  than  that.  You 
know  that  you  did  care  for  him." 

"  Oh !  that 's  a  very  different  thing.  That 's  a 
thing  that  can  be  got  over." 

"  Got  over  ! "  repeated  Mrs.  Leighton,  aghast. 

"  Of  course,  it  can  !  Don't  be  romantic,  mamma. 
People  get  over  dozens  of  such  fancies.  They  even 
marry  for  love  two  or  three  times." 

"  Never  ! "  cried  her  mother,  doing  her  best  to 
feel  shocked,  and  at  last  looking  it. 

Her  looking  it  had  no  effect  upon  Alma.  "  You 
can  easily  get  over  caring  for  people ;  but  you  can't 
get  over  liking  them — if  you  like  them  because  they 
are  sweet  and  good.  That's  what  lasts.  I  was  a 
simple  goose,  and  he  imposed  upon  me  because  he 
was  a  sophisticated  goose.  Now  the  case  is  reversed.'* 

"  He  does  care  for  you,  now.  You  can  see  it. 
Why  do  you  encourage  him  to  come  here  1 " 

"I  don't,"  said  Alma.  "I  will  tell  him  to  keep 
away  if  you  like.  But  whether  he  comes  or  goes,  it 
will  be  the  same." 

"  Not  to  him,  Alma  !     He  is  in  love  with  you  ! " 

"  He  has  never  said  so." 

"  And  you  would  really  let  him  say  so,  when  you 
intend  to  refuse  him  ? " 

"I  can't  very  well  refuse  him  till  he  does  say  so." 

This  was  undeniable.  Mrs.  Leighton  could  only 
demand  in  an  awful  tone,  "  May  I  ask  why — if  you 


280  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

cared  for  him ;  and  I  know  you  care  for  him  still — 
you  will  refuse  him  1 " 

Alma  laughed.  "Because — because  I'm  wedded 
to  my  Art,  and  I  'm  not  going  to  commit  bigamy, 
whatever  I  do." 

"  Alma ! " 

"  Well,  then,  because  I  don't  like  him — that  is,  I 
don't  believe  in  him,  and  don't  trust  him.  He's 
fascinating,  but  he  's  false  and  he 's  fickle.  He  can't 
help  it,  I  dare  say." 

"  And  you  are  perfectly  hard.  Is  it  possible  that 
you  were  actually  pleased  to  have  Mr.  Fulkerson 
tease  you  about  Mr.  Dryfoos  1 " 

"  Oh,  good  night,  now,  mamma  !  This  is  becom- 
ing personal." 


PART  THIRD. 
I. 

THE  scheme  of  a  banquet  to  celebrate  the  initial 
success  of  Every  Other  Week  expanded  in  Fulkerson's 
fancy  into  a  series.  Instead  of  the  publishing  and 
editorial  force,  with  certain  of  the  more  representa- 
tive artists  and  authors  sitting  down  to  a  modest 
supper  in  Mrs.  Leighton's  parlours,  he  conceived  of 
a  dinner  at  Delmonico's,  with  the  principal  literary 
and  artistic  people  throughout  the  country  as  guests, 
and  an  inexhaustible  hospitality  to  reporters  and 
correspondents,  from  whom  paragraphs,  prophetic 
and  historic,  would  flow  weeks  before  and  after  the 
first  of  the  series.  He  said  the  thing  was  a  new  de- 
parture in  magazines ;  it  amounted  to  something  in 
literature  as  radical  as  the  American  Revolution  in 
politics :  it  was  the  idea  of  self-government  in  the 
arts;  and  it  was  this  idea  that  had  never  yet  been 
fully  developed  in  regard  to  it.  That  was  what 
must  be  done  in  the  speeches  at  the  dinner,  and  the 
speeches  must  be  reported.  Then  it  would  go  like 
wildfire.  He  asked  March  whether  he  thought  Mr. 
Depew  could  be  got  to  come ;  Mark  Twain,  he  was 


282  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES 

sure  would  come;  he  was  a  literary  man.  They 
ought  to  invite  Mr.  Evarts,  and  the  Cardinal  and 
the  leading  Protestant  divines.  His  ambition 
stopped  at  nothing,  nothing  but  the  question  of 
expense ;  there  he  had  to  wait  the  return  of  the 
elder  Dryfoos  from  the  West,  and  Dryfoos  was  still 
delayed  at  Moffitt,  and  Fulkerson  openly  confessed 
that  he  was  afraid  he  would  stay  there  till  his  own 
enthusiasm  escaped  in  other  activities,  other  plans. 

Fulkerson  was  as  little  likely  as  possible  to  fall 
under  a  superstitious  subjection  to  another  man  ;  but 
March  could  not  help  seeing  that  in  this  possible 
measure  Dryfoos  was  Fulkerson's  fetish.  He  did  not 
revere  him,  March  decided,  because  it  was  not  in 
Fulkerson's  nature  to  revere  anything ;  he  could  like 
and  dislike,  but  he  could  not  respect.  Apparently, 
however,  Dryfoos  daunted  him  somehow ;  and  be- 
sides the  homage  which  those  who  have  not  pay 
to  those  who  have,  Fulkerson  rendered  Dryfoos  the 
tribute  of  a  feeling  which  March  could  only  define  as 
a  sort  of  bewilderment.  As  well  as  March  could 
make  out,  this  feeling  was  evoked  by  the  spectacle 
of  Dryfoos's  unfailing  luck,  which  Fulkerson  was  fond 
of  dazzling  himself  with.  It  perfectly  consisted  with 
a  keen  sense  of  whatever  was  sordid  and  selfish  in  a 
man  on  whom  his  career  must  have  had  its  inevitable 
effect.  He  liked  to  philosophise  the  case  with  March, 
to  recall  Dryfoos  as  he  was  when  he  first  met  him 
still  somewhat  in  the  sap,  at  Moffitt,  and  to  study 
the  processes  by  which  he  imagined  him  to  have 
dried  into  the  hardened  speculator,  without  even  the 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        283 

pretence  to  any  advantage  but  his  own  in  his  ven- 
tures. He  was  aware  of  painting  the  character  too 
vividly,  and  he  warned  March  not  to  accept  it 
exactly  in  those  tints,  but  to  subdue  them  and  shade 
it  for  himself.  He  said  that  where  his  advantage 
was  not  concerned,  there  was  ever  so  much  good 
in  Dryfoos,  and  that  if  in  some  things  he  had 
grown  inflexible,  he  had  expanded  in  others  to  the 
full  measure  of  the  vast  scale  on  which  he  did  busi- 
ness. It  had  seemed  a  little  odd  to  March  that  a 
man  should  put  money  into  such  an  enterprise  as 
Every  Other  Week  and  go  off  about  other  affairs,  not 
only  without  any  sign  of  anxiety  but  without  any 
sort  of  interest.  But  Fulkerson  said  that  was  the 
splendid  side  of  Dryfoos.  He  had  a  courage,  a 
magnanimity,  that  was  equal  to  the  strain  of  any 
such  uncertainty.  He  had  faced  the  music  once  for 
all,  when  he  asked  Fulkerson  what  the  thing  would 
cost  in  the  different  degrees  of  potential  failure ;  and 
then  he  had  gone  off,  leaving  everything  to  Fulkerson 
and  the  younger  Dryfoos,  with  the  instruction  simply 
to  go  ahead  and  not  bother  him  about  it.  Fulkerson 
called  that  pretty  tall  for  an  old  fellow  who  used  to 
bewail  the  want  of  pigs  and  chickens  to  occupy  his 
mind.  He  alleged  it  as  another  proof  of  the  versa- 
tility of  the  American  mind,  and  of  the  grandeur  of 
institutions  and  opportunities  that  let  every  man 
grow  to  his  full  size,  so  that  any  man  in  America 
could  run  the  concern  if  necessary.  He  believed 
that  old  Dryfoos  could  step  into  Bismarck's  shoes, 
and  run  the  German  Empire  at  ten  days'  notice,  or 


284  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

about  as  long  as  it  would  take  him  to  go  from  New 
York  to  Berlin.  But  Bismarck  would  not  know 
anything  about  Dryfoos's  plans  till  Dryfoos  got 
ready  to  show  his  hand.  Fulkerson  himself  did  not 
pretend  to  say  what  the  old  man  had  been  up  to, 
since  he  -went  West.  He  was  at  Moffitt  first,  and 
then  he  was  at  Chicago,  and  then  he  had  gone  out  to 
Denver  to  look  after  some  mines  he  had  out  there, 
and  a  railroad  or  two ;  and  now  he  was  at  Moffitt 
again.  He  was  supposed  to  be  closing  up  his  affairs 
there,  but  nobody  could  say. 

Fulkerson  told  March  the  morning  after  Dryfoos 
returned  that  he  had  not  only  not  pulled  out  at 
Moffitt,  but  had  gone  in  deeper,  ten  times  deeper 
than  ever.  He  was  in  a  royal  good-humour,  Fulker- 
son reported,  and  was  going  to  drop  into  the  office 
on  his  way  up  from  the  street  (March  understood 
Wall  Street)  that  afternoon.  He  Avas  tickled  to 
death  with  Every  Other  Week  so  far  as  it  had  gone, 
and  was  anxious  to  pay  his  respects  to  the  editor. 

March  accounted  for  some  rhetoric  in  this,  but  let 
it  flatter  him,  and  prepared  himself  for  a  meeting 
about  which  he  could  see  that  Fulkerson  was  only 
less  nervous  than  he  had  shown  himself  about  the 
public  reception  of  the  first  number.  It  gave  March 
a  disagreeable  feeling  of  being  owned  and  of  being 
about  to  be  inspected  by  his  proprietor ;  but  he  fell 
back  upon  such  independence  as  he  could  find  in  the 
thought  of  those  two  thousand  dollars  of  income  be- 
yond the  caprice  of  his  owner,  and  maintained  an 
outward  serenity. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  285 

He  was  a  little  ashamed  afterward  of  the  resolu- 
tion it  had  cost  him  to  do  so.  It  was  not  a  question 
of  Dryfoos's  physical  presence :  that  was  rather 
effective  than  otherwise,  and  carried  a  suggestion  of 
moneyed  indifference  to  convention  in  the  grey 
business  suit  of  provincial  cut,  and  the  low,  wide- 
brimmed  hat  of  flexible  black  felt.  He  had  a  stick 
with  an  old-fashioned  top  of  buck-horn  worn  smooth 
and  bright  by  the  palm  of  his  hand,  which  had  not 
lost  its  character  in  fat,  and  which  had  a  history  of 
former  work  in  its  enlarged  knuckles,  though  it  was 
now  as  soft  as  March's,  and  must  once  have  been 
small  even  for  a  man  of  Mr.  Dryfoos's  stature ;  he 
was  below  the  average  size.  But  what  struck  March 
was  the  fact  that  Dryfoos  seemed  furtively  conscious 
of  being  a  country  person,  and  of  being  aware  that 
in  their  meeting  he  was  to  be  tried  by  other  tests 
than  those  which  would  have  availed  him  as  a 
shrewd  speculator.  He  evidently  had  some  curiosity 
about  March,  as  the  first  of  his  kind  whom  he  had  en- 
countered ;  some  such  curiosity  as  the  country  school 
trustee  feels  and  tries  to  hide  in  the  presence  of  the 
new  schoolmaster.  But  the  whole  affair  was  of  course 
on  a  higher  plane ;  on  one  sid.e  Dryfoos  was  much 
more  a  man  of  the  world  than  March  was,  and  he 
probably  divined  this  at  once,  and  rested  himself 
upon  the  fact  in  a  measure.  It  seemed  to  be  his 
preference  that  his  son  should  introduce  them,  for 
he  came  upstairs  with  Conrad,  and  they  had  fairly 
made  acquaintance  before  Fulkerson  joined  them. 

Conrad  offered  to  leave  them  at  once,   but   his 


286       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

father  made  him  stay.  "I  reckon  Mr.  March  and 
I  haven't  got  anything  so  private  to  talk  about  that 
we  want  to  keep  it  from  the  other  partners.  Well, 
Mr.  March,  are  you  getting  used  to  New  York  yet  1 
It  takes  a  little  time." 

"  Oh  yes.  But  not  so  much  time  as  most  places. 
Everybody  belongs  more  or  less  in  New  York ; 
nobody  has  to  belong  here  altogether." 

"Yes,  that  is  so.  You  can  try  it,  and  go  away 
if  you  don't  like  it  a  good  deal  easier  than  you  could 
from  a  smaller  place.  Wouldn't  make  so  much  talk, 
would  it  1 "  He  glanced  at  March  with  a  jocose 
light  in  his  shrewd  eyes.  "  That  is  the  way  I  feel 
about  it  all  the  time :  just  visiting.  Xow,  it 
wouldn't  be  that  way  in  Boston,  I  reckon  1 " 

"  You  couldn't  keep  on  visiting  there  your  whole 
life,"  said  March. 

Dryfoos  laughed,  showing  his  lower  teeth  in  a 
way  that  was  at  once  simple  and  fierce.  "  Mr. 
Fulkerson  didn't  hardly  know  as  he  could  get  you 
to  leave.  I  suppose  you  got  used  to  it  there.  I 
never  been  in  your  city." 

"I  had  got  used  to  it;  but  it  was  hardly  my 
city,  except  by  marriage.  My  wife  's  a  Bostonian." 

"  She 's  been  a  little  homesick  here,  then,"  said 
Dryfoos,  with  a  smile  of  the  same  quality  as  his 
laugh. 

"  Less  than  I  expected,"  said  March.  "  Of  course 
she  was  very  much  attached  to  our  old  home/' 

"  I  guess  my  wife  won't  ever  get  used  to  New 
York,"  said  Dryfoos,  and  he  drew  in  his  lower  lip 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  287 

with  a  sharp  sigh.  "  But  my  girls  like  it ;  they  're 
young.  You  never  been  out  our  way  yet,  Mr. 
March  ?  Out  West  1 " 

"Well,  only  for  the  purpose  of  being  born,  and 
brought  up.  I  used  to  live  in  Crawfordsville,  and 
then  Indianapolis." 

"Indianapolis  is  bound  to  be  a  great  place,"  said 
Dryfoos.  "  I  remember  now,  Mr.  Fulkerson  told  me 
you  was  from  our  State."  He  went  on  to  brag  of 
the  West,  as  if  March  were  an  Easterner  and  had  to 
be  convinced.  "  You  ought  to  see  all  that  country. 
It 's  a  great  country." 

"  Oh  yes,"  said  March,  "  I  understand  that."  He 
expected  the  praise  of  the  great  West  to  lead  up  to 
some  comment  on  Every  Other  Week ;  and  there  was 
abundant  suggestion  of  that  topic  in  the  manuscripts, 
proofs  of  letter-press  and  illustrations,  with  advance 
•copies  of  the  latest  number  strewn  over  his  table. 

But  Dryfoos  apparently  kept  himself  from  looking 
at  these  things.  He  rolled  his  head  about  on  his 
shoulders  to  take  in  the  character  of  the  room,  and 
said  to  his  son,  "  You  didn't  change  the  woodwork 
.after  all." 

"  No ;  the  architect  thought  we  had  better  let  it 
be,  unless  we  meant  to  change  the  whole  place.  He 
liked  its  being  old-fashioned." 

"I  hope  you  feel  comfortable  here,  Mr.  March," 
the  old  man  said,  bringing  his  eyes  to  bear  upon  him 
again  after  their  tour  of  inspection. 

"  Too  comfortable  for  a  working-man,"  said  March, 
he  thought  that  this  remark  must  brine;  them  to 


288  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

some  talk  about  his  work,  but  the  proprietor  only 
smiled  again. 

"  I  guess  I  shan't  lose  much  on  this  house,"  he 
returned,  as  if  musing  aloud.  "This  down-town 
property  is  coming  up.  Business  is  getting  in  on  all 
these  side  streets.  I  thought  I  paid  a  pretty  good 
price  for  it,  too."  He  went  on  to  talk  of  real  estate, 
and  March  began  to  feel  a  certain  resentment  at  his 
continued  avoidance  of  the  only  topic  in  which  they 
could  really  have  a  common  interest.  "  You  live 
down  this  way  somewhere,  don't  you  1 "  the  old  man 
concluded. 

"Yes.  I  wished  to  be  near  my  work."  March 
was  vexed  with  himself  for  having  recurred  to  it ; 
but  afterward  he  was  not  sure  but  Dryfoos  shared 
his  own  diffidence  in  the  matter,  and  was  waiting  for 
him  to  bring  it  openly  into  the  talk.  At  times  he 
seemed  wary  and  masterful,  and  then  March  felt 
that  he  was  being  examined  and  tested  ;  at  others  so 
simple  that  March  might  well  have  fancied  that  he 
needed  encouragement,  and  desired  it.  He  talked  of 
his  wife  and  daughters  in  a  way  that  invited  March 
to  say  friendly  things  of  his  family,  which  appeared 
to  give  the  old  man  first  an  undue  pleasure,  and 
then  a  final  distrust.  At  moments  he  turned,  Avith 
an  effect  of  finding  relief  in  it,  to  his  son  and  spoke 
to  him  across  March  of  matters  which  he  was  un- 
acquainted with ;  he  did  not  seem  aware  that  this 
was  rude,  but  the  young  man  must  have  felt  it  so ; 
he  always  brought  the  conversation  back,  and  once 
at  some  cost  to  himself  when  his  father  made  it 
personal. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  289 

"  I  want  to  make  a  regular  New  York  business 
man  out  of  that  fellow,"  he  said  to  March,  pointing 
at  Conrad  with,  his  stick.  "  You  s'pose  I  'm  ever 
going  to  do  it  ? " 

"Well,  I  don't  know,"  said  March,  trying  to  fall 
in  with  the  joke.  "Do  you  mean  nothing  but  a 
business  man  ? " 

The  old  man  laughed  at  whatever  latent  meaning 
he  fancied  in  this,  and  said,  "  You  think  he  would 
be  a  little  too  much  for  me  there  ?  Well,  I  Ve  seen 
enough  of  'em  to  know  it  don't  always  take  a  large 
pattern  of  a  man  to  do  a  large  business.  But  I  want 
him  to  get  the  business  training,  and  then  if  he 
wants  to  go  into  something  else,  he  knows  what  the 
world  is,  anyway.  Heigh  ? " 

"  Oh  yes  ! "  March  assented,  with  some  compassion 
for  the  young  man  reddening  patiently  under  his 
father's  comment. 

Dryfoos  went  on  as  if  his  son  were  not  in  hearing. 
"  Now  that  boy  wanted  to  be  a  preacher.  W7hat 
does  a  preacher  know  about  the  world  he  preaches 
against,  when  he 's  been  brought  up  a  preacher  ? 
He  don't  know  so  much  as  a  bad  little  boy  in  his 
Sunday-school ;  he  knows  about  as  much  as  a  gH. 
I  always  told  him,  You  be  a  man  first,  and  then  you 
be  a  preacher,  if  you  want  to.  Heigh  ? " 

"  Precisely."  March  began  to  feel  some  compas- 
sion for  himself  in  being  witness  of  the  young  fellow's 
discomfort  under  his  father's  homily. 

"  When  we  first  come  to  New  York,  I  told  him, 
Now  here 's  your  chance  to  see  the  world  on  a  big 
VOL.  I.— 13 


290       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

scale.  You  know  already  what  work  and  saving 
and  steady  habits  and  sense  will  bring  a  man  to ; 
you  don't  want  to  go  round  among  the  rich ;  you 
want  to  go  among  the  poor,  and  see  what  laziness, 
and  drink,  and  dishonesty,  and  foolishness  will  bring 
men  to.  And  I  guess  he  knows,  about  as  well  as 
anybody ;  and  if  he  ever  goes  to  preaching  he  '11 
know  what  he's  preaching  about."  The  old  man 
smiled  his  fierce,  simple  smile,  and  in  his  sharp  eyes 
March  fancied  contempt  of  the  ambition  he  had 
balked  in  his  son.  The  present  scene  must  have 
been  one  of  many  between  them,  ending  in  meek 
submission  on  the  part  of  the  young  man  whom  his 
father  perhaps  without  realising  his  cruelty  treated  as 
a  child.  March  took  it  hard  that  he  should  be  made 
to  suffer  in  the  presence  of  a  co-ordinate  power  like 
himself,  and  began  to  dislike  the  old  man  out  of  pro- 
portion to  his  offence,  which  might  have  been  mere 
want  of  taste,  or  an  effect  of  mere  embarrassment 
before  him.  But  evidently,  whatever  rebellion  his 
daughters  had  carried  through  against  him,  he  had 
kept  his  dominion  over  this  gentle  spirit  unbroken. 
March  did  not  choose  to  make  any  response,  but  to 
let  him  continue,  if  he  would,  entirely  upon  his 
own  impulse. 


II. 


A  SILENCE  followed,  of  rather  painful  length.  It 
was  broken  by  the  cheery  voice  of  Fulkerson,  sent 
before  him  to  herald  Fulkerson's  cheery  person. 
"  Well,  I  suppose  you  've  got  the  glorious  success  of 
Every  Other  Week  down  pretty  cold  in  your  talk  by 
this  time.  I  should  have  been  up  sooner  to  join  you, 
but  I  was  nipping  a  man  for  the  last  page  of  the 
cover.  I  guess  we  '11  have  to  let  the  Muse  have  that 
for  an  advertisement  instead  of  a  poem  the  next 
time,  March.  Well,  the  old  gentleman  given  you 
boys  your  scolding  1 "  The  person  of  Fulkerson  had 
got  into  the  room  long  before  he  reached  this 
question,  and  had  planted  itself  astride  a  cliair. 
Fulkerson  looked  over  the  chair  back,  now  at  March, 
and  now  at  the  elder  Dryfoos  as  he  spoke. 

March  answered  him.  "I  guess  we  must  have 
been  waiting  for  you,  Fulkerson.  At  any  rate  we 
hadn't  got  to  the  scolding  yet" 

"  Why,  I  didn't  suppose  Mr.  Dryfoos  could  'a'  held 
in  so  long.  I  understood  he  was  awful  mad  at  the 
way  the  thing  started  off,  and  wanted  to  give  you  a 
piece  of  his  mind,  when  he  got  at  you.  I  inferred 
as  much  from  a  remark  that  he  made."  March  and 
U 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

Dryfoos  looked  foolish,  as  men  do  when  made  the 
subject  of  this  sort  of  merry  misrepresentation. 

"  I  reckon  my  scolding  will  keep  awhile  yet,"  said 
the  old  man  dryly. 

"Well,  then,  I  guess  it's  a  good  chance  to  give 
Mr.  Dryfoos  an  idea  of  what  we  Ve  really  done — just 
while  we  're  resting,  as  Artemus  Ward  says.  Heigh, 
March  ? " 

"  I  will  let  you  blow  the  trumpet,  Fulkerson.  I 
think  it  belongs  strictly  to  the  advertising  depart- 
ment," said  March.  He  now  distinctly  resented  the 
old  man's  failure  to  say  anything  to  him  of  the 
magazine  ;  he  made  his  inference  that  it  was  from  a 
suspicion  of  his  readiness  to  presume  upon  a  recog- 
nition of  his  share  in  the  success,  and  he  was  deter- 
mined to  second  no  sort  of  appeal  for  it. 

"The  advertising  department  is  the  heart  and 
soul  of  every  business,"  said  Fulkerson  hardily, 
"  and  I  like  to  keep  my  hand  in  with  a  little  practice 
on  the  trumpet  in  private.  I  don't  believe  Mr.  Dry- 
foos has  got  any  idea  of  the  extent  of  this  thing. 
He 's  been  out  among  those  Rackensackens,  where 
we  were  all  born,  and  he  's  read  the  notices  in  their 
seven  by  nine  dailies,  and  he 's  seen  the  thing  selling  on 
the  cars,  and  he  thinks  he  appreciates  what's  been 
done.  But  I  should  just  like  to  take  him  round  in 
this  little  old  metropolis  awhile,  and  show  him  Every 
Oilier  Week  on  the  centre  tables  of  the  millionaires 
— the  Vanderbilts  and  the  Astors — and  in  the  homes 
of  culture  and  refinement  everywhere,  and  let 
him  judge  for  himself.  It's  the  talk  of  the  clubs 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  293 

and  the  dinner-tables ;  children  cry  for  it ;  it 's  the 
Castoria  of  literature,  and  the  Pearline  of  art,  the 
Won't-be-happy-till-he-gets-it  of  every  enlightened 
man,  woman,  and  child  in  this  vast  city.  I  knew 
we  could  capture  the  country ;  but,  my  goodness  ! 
I  didn't  expect  to  have  New  York  fall  into  our  hands 
at  a  blow.  But  that 's  just  exactly  what  New  York 
has  done.  Every  Other  Week  supplies  the  long-felt 
want  that 's  been  grinding  round  in  New  York  and 
keeping  it  awake  nights  ever  since  the  war.  It's 
the  culmination  of  all  the  high  and  ennobling  ideals 
of  the  past — 

"  How  much,"  asked  Dryfoos,  "  do  you  expect  to 
get  out  of  it  the  first  year,  if  it  keeps  the  start  it 's 
got?" 

"  Comes  right  down  to  business,  every  time  ! "  said 
Fulkerson,  referring  the  characteristic  to  March  with 
a  delighted  glance.  "  Well,  sir,  if  everything  works 
right,  and  we  get  rain  enough  to  fill  up  the  springs, 
and  it  isn't  a  grasshopper  year,  I  expect  to  clear 
above  all  expenses  something  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  twenty-five  thousand  dollars." 

"  Humph  !  And  you  are  all  going  to  work  a  year 
— editor,  manager,  publisher,  artists,  writers,  printers, 
and  the  rest  of  'em — to  clear  twenty-five  thousand 
dollars  1 — I  made  that  much  in  half  a  day  in  Moffitt 
once.  I  see  it  made  in  half  a  minute  in  Wall  Street, 
sometimes."  The  old  man  presented  this  aspect  of 
the  case  with  a  good-natured  contempt,  which  in- 
cluded Fulkerson  and  his  enthusiasm  in  an  obvious 
liking. 


294  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

His  son  suggested,  "  But  when  \ve  make  that 
money  here,  no  one  loses  it." 

"Can  you  prove  that?"  His  father  turned 
sharply  upon  him.  "  Whatever  is  won  is  lost.  It  '& 
all  a  game  ;  it  don't  make  any  difference  what  you 
bet  on.  Business  is  business,  and  a  business  man 
takes  his  risks  with  his  eyes  open." 

"  Ah,  but  the  glory  !  "  Fulkerson  insinuated 
with  impudent  persiflage.  "I  hadn't  got  to  the 
glory  yet,  because  it 's  hard  to  estimate  it ;  but  put 
the  glory  at  the  lowest  figure,  Mr.  Dryfoos,  and  add 
it  to  the  twenty-five  thousand,  and  you  've  got  an 
annual  income  from  Every  Other  Week  of  dollars 
enough  to  construct  a  silver  railroad,  double-track, 
from  this  office  to  the  moon.  I  don't  mention  any 
of  the  sister  planets  because  I  like  to  keep  within 
bounds." 

Dryfoos  showed  his  lower  teeth  for  pleasure  in 
Fulkerson's  fooling,  and  said,  "  That 's  what  I  like 
about  you,  Mr.  Fulkerson  :  you  always  keep  within 
bounds.", 

"Well,  I  ain't  a  shrinking  Boston  violet,  like 
March  here.  More  sunflower  in  my  style  of  diffi- 
dence ;  but  I  am  modest,  I  don't  deny  it,"  said  Ful- 
kerson. "  And  I  do  hate  to  have  a  thing  overstated." 

"And  the  glory — you  do  really  think  there's 
something  in  the  glory  that  pays  ? " 

"  Not  a  doubt  of  it !  I  shouldn't  care  for  the 
paltry  return  in  money,"  said  Fulkerson,  with  a 
burlesque  of  generous  disdain,  "  if  it  wasn't  for  the 
glory  along  with  it." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       295 

"  And  how  should  you  feel  about  the  glory,  if 
there  was  no  money  along  with  it  ? " 

"  Well,  sir,  I  'm  happy  to  say  we  haven't  come  to 
that  yet." 

"Now,  Conrad,  here,"  said  the  old  man,  with  a 
sort  of  pathetic  rancour,  "  would  rather  have  the 
glory  alone.  I  believe  he  don't  even  care  much  for 
your  kind  of  glory,  either,  Mr.  Fulkerson." 

Fulkerson  ran  his  little  eyes  curiously  over 
Conrad's  face  and  then  March's,  as  if  searching  for  a 
trace  there  of  something  gone  before  which  would 
enable  him  to  reach  Dryfoos's  whole  meaning.  He 
apparently  resolved  to  launch  himself  upon  con- 
jecture. "  Oh,  well,  we  know  how  Conrad  feels 
about  the  things  of  this  world,  anyway.  I  should 
like  to  take  'em  on  the  plane  of  another  sphere,  too, 
sometimes  ;  but  I  noticed  a  good  while  ago  that  this 
was  the  world  I  was  born  into,  and  so  I  made  up  my 
mind  that  I  would  do  pretty  much  what  I  saw  the 
rest  of  the  folks  doing  here  below.  And  I  can't  see 
but  what  Conrad  runs  the  thing  on  business  prin- 
ciples in  his  department,  and  I  guess  you  '11  find  it  so 
if  you  look  into  it.  I  consider  that  we  're  a  whole 
team  and  big  dog  under  the  wagon  with  you  to  draw 
on  for  supplies,  and  March,  here,  at  the  head  of  the 
literary  business,  and  Conrad  in  the  counting-room, 
and  me  to  do  the  heavy  lying  in  the  advertising  part. 
Oh,  and  Beaton,  of  course,  in  the  art.  I  'most  for- 
got Beaton — Hamlet  Avith  Hamlet  left  out." 

Dryfoos  looked  across  at  his  son.  "  "Wasn't  that 
the  fellow's  name  that  was  there  last  night  ?  " 


296  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Yes,"  said  Conrad. 

The  old  man  rose.  "  Well,  I  reckon  I  got  to  be 
going.  You  ready  to  go  up-town,  Conrad  1 " 

"Well,  not  quite  yet,  father." 

The  old  man  shook  hands  with  March,  and  went 
downstairs,  followed  by  his  son. 

Fulkerson  remained. 

"  He  didn't  jump  at  the  chance  you  gave  him  to 
compliment  us  all  round,  Fulkerson,"  said  March, 
with  a  smile  not  wholly  of  pleasure. 

Fulkerson  asked  with  as  little  joy,  in  the  grin  he 
had  on,  "Didn't  he  say  anything  to  you  before  I 
came  in  ? " 

"  Not  a  word." 

"  Dogged  if  I  know  what  to  make  of  it,"  sighed 
Fulkerson,  "but  I  guess  he's  been  having  a  talk 
with  Conrad  that 's  soured  on  him.  I  reckon  may  be 
he  came  back  expecting  to  find  that  boy  reconciled 
to  the  glory  of  this  world,  and  Conrad 's  showed  him- 
self just  as  set  against  it  as  ever." 

"It  might  have  been  that,"  March  admitted  pen- 
sively. "I  fancied  something  of  the  kind  myself 
from  words  the  old  man  let  drop." 

Fulkerson  made  him  explain,  and  then  he  said, 
"That's  it,  then;  and  it's  all  right.  Conrad '11 
come  round  in  time ;  and  all  we  've  got  to  do  is  to 
have  patience  with  the  old  man  till  he  does.  I 
know  he  likes  you."  Fulkerson  affirmed  this  only 
interrogatively,  and  looked  so  anxiously  to  March 
for  corroboration  that  March  laughed. 

" He  dissembled  his  love, "lie  said;  but  afterward 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  297 

in  describing  to  his  wife  his  interview  with  Mr. 
Dryfoos  he  was  less  amused  with  this  fact. 

When  she  saw  that  he  was  a  little  cast  down  by 
it,  she  began  to  encourage  him.  "He's  just  a 
common,  ignorant  man,  and  probably  didn't  know 
how  to  express  himself.  You  may  be  perfectly  sure 
that  he 's  delighted  with  the  success  of  the  magazine, 
and  that  he  understands  as  well  as  you  do  that  he 
owes  it  all  to  you." 

"  Ah,  I  'm  not  so  sure.  I  don't  believe  a  man 's 
any  better  for  having  made  money  so  easily  and 
rapidly  as  Dryfoos  has  done,  and  I  doubt  if  he 's  any 
wiser.  I  don't  know  just  the  point  he 's  reached  in 
his  evolution  from  grub  to  beetle,  but  I  do  know 
that  so  far  as  it's  gone  the  process  must  have  in- 
volved a  bewildering  change  of  ideals  and  criterions. 
I  guess  he 's  come  to  despise  a  great  many  things 
that  he  once  respected,  and  that  intellectual  ability 
is  among  them — what  we  call  intellectual  ability. 
He  must  have  undergone  a  moral  deterioration,  an 
atrophy  of  the  generous  instincts,  and  I  don't  see 
why  it  shouldn't  have  reached  his  mental  make-up. 
He  has  sharpened,  but  he  has  narrowed  ;  his  sagacity 
has  turned  into  suspicion,  his  caution  to  meanness, 
his  courage  to  ferocity.  That 's  the  way  I  philoso- 
phise a  man  of  Dryfoos's  experience,  and  I  am  not 
very  proud  when  I  realise  that  such  a  man  and  his 
experience  are  the  ideal  and  ambition  of  most  Ameri- 
cans. I  rather  think  they  came  pretty  near  being 
mine,  once." 

"  No,  dear,  they  never  did,"  his  wife  protested. 
13* 


298       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"Well,  they're  not  likely  to  be,  in  the  future. 
The  Dryfoos  feature  of  Every  Other  Week  is  thoroughly 
distasteful  to  me." 

"Why,  but  he  hasn't  really  got  anything  to  do 
with  it,  has  he,  beyond  furnishing  the  money  1 " 

"That's  the  impression  that  Fulkerson  has 
allowed  us  to  get  But  the  man  that  holds  the  purse 
holds  the  reins.  He  may  let  us  guide  the  horse,  but 
when  he  likes  he  can  drive.  If  we  don't  like  his 
driving,  then  we  can  get  down." 

Mrs.  March  was  less  interested  in  this  figure  of 
speech  than  in  the  personal  aspects  involved.  "  Then 
you  think  Mr.  Fulkerson  has  deceived  you  ? " 

"  Oh  no  ! "  said  her  husband,  laughing.  "  But  I 
think  he  has  deceived  himself,  perhaps." 

"How  1 "  she  pursued. 

"He  may  have  thought  he  was  using  Dryfoos, 
when  Dryfoos  was  using  him,  and  he  may  have 
supposed  he  was  not  afraid  of  him  when  he  was 
very  much  so.  His  courage  hadn't  been  put  to 
the  test,  and  courage  is  a  matter  of  proof,  like  pro- 
ficiency on  the  fiddle,  you  know :  you  can't  tell 
whether  youVe  got  it  till  you  try." 

"  Nonsense  !  Do  you  mean  that  he  would  ever 
sacrifice  you  to  Mr.  Dryfoos  1 " 

"  I  hope  he  may  not  be  tempted.  But  I  'd  rather 
be  taking  the  chances  with  Fulkerson  alone,  than 
with  Fulkerson  and  Dryfoos  to  back  him.  Dryfoos 
seems  somehow  to  take  the  poetry  and  the  pleasure 
out  of  the  thing." 

Mrs.  March  was  a  long  time  silent.      Then  she 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  299 

began,  "Well,  my  dear,  /  never  wanted  to  come  to 
New  York " 

"  Neither  did  I,"  March  promptly  put  in. 

"But  now  that  we're  here,"  she  went  on,  "I'm 
not  going  to  have  you  letting  every  little  thing  dis- 
courage you.  I  don't  see  what  there  was  in  Mr. 
Dryfoos's  manner  to  give  you  any  anxiety.  He 's 
just  a  common,  stupid,  inarticulate  country  person, 
and  he  didn't  know  how  to  express  himself,  as  I  said 
in  the  beginning,  and  that 's  the  reason  he  didn't  say 
anything." 

"  Well,  I  don't  deny  you  're  right  about  it." 

"  It 's  dreadful,"  His  wife  continued,  "  to  be  mixed 
up  with  such  a  man  and  his  family,  but  I  don't  be- 
lieve he  '11  ever  meddle  with  your  management,  and 
till  he  does,  all  you  need  do  is  to  have  as  little  to  do 
with  him  as  possible,  and  go  quietly  on  your  own 
way." 

"  Oh,  I  shall  go  on  quietly  enough,"  said  March. 
"  I  hope  I  shan't  begin  going  stealthily." 

"  Well,  my  dear,"  said  Mrs.  March,  "  just  let  me 
know  when  you  're  tempted  to  do  that.  If  ever  you 
sacrifice  the  smallest  grain  of  your  honesty  or  your 
self-respect  to  Mr.  Dryfoos,  or  anybody  else,  I  will 
simply  renounce  you." 

"  In  view  of  that  I  'm  rather  glad  the  management 
of  Every  Other  Week  involves  tastes  and  not  convic- 
tions "  said  March. 


III. 


THAT  night  Dryfoos  was  wakened  from  his  after- 
dinner  nap  by  the  sound  of  gay  talk  and  nervous 
giggling  in  the  drawing-room.  The  talk,  which  was 
Christine's,  and  the  giggling,  which  was  Mela's,  were 
intershot  with  the  heavier  tones  of  a  man's  voice ; 
and  Dryfoos  lay  awhile  on  the  leathern  lounge  in 
his  library,  trying  to  make  out  whether  he  knew  the 
voice.  His  wife  sat  in  a  deep  chair  before  the  fire, 
with  her  eyes  on  his  face,  waiting  for  him  to  wake. 

"  Who  is  that  out  there  1  "  he  asked,  without 
opening  his  eyes. 

"Indeed,  indeed  I  don't  know,  Jacob,"  his  wife 
answered.  "  I  reckon  it 's  just  some  visitor  of  the 
girls." 

"Was  I  snoring?" 

"Not  a  bit.  You  was  sleeping  as  quiet!  I  did 
hate  to  have  'em  wake  you,  and  I  was  just  goin'  out 
to  shoo  them.  They've  been  playin'  something, 
and  that  made  them  laugh." 

"  I  didn't  know  but  I  had  snored,"  said  the  old 
man,  sitting  up. 

"No,"  said  his  wife.  Then  she  asked  wistfully, 
"  Was  you  out  at  the  old  place,  Jacob  1 " 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  301 

"Yes." 

"Did  it  look  natural?" 

"  Yes ;  mostly.  They  're  sinking  the  wells  down 
in  the  woods  pasture." 

"  And — the  childern's  graves  1 " 

"  They  haven't  touched  that  part.  But  I  reckon 
we  got  to  have  'em  moved  to  the  cemetery.  I  bought 
a  lot." 

The  old  woman  began  softly  to  weep.  "  It  does 
seem  too  hard  that  they  can't  be  let  to  rest  in  peace, 
pore  little  things.  I  wanted  you  and  me  to  lay  there 
too,  when  our  time  come,  Jacob.  Just  there,  back 
o'  the  beehives,  and  under  them  shoomakes — my,  I 
can  see  the  very  place  !  And  I  don't  believe  I  '11 
ever  feel  at  home  anywheres  else.  I  woon't  know 
where  I  am  when  the  trumpet  sounds.  I  have  to 
think  before  I  can  tell  where  the  east  is  in  New. 
York ;  and  what  if  I  should  git  faced  the  wrong 
way  when  I  raise  ?  Jacob,  I  wonder  you  could  sell 
it ! "  Her  head  shook,  and  the  fire-light  shone  on 
her  tears,  as  she  searched  the  folds  of  her  dress  for 
her  pocket. 

A  peal  of  laughter  came  from  the  drawing-room, 
and  then  the  sound  of  chords  struck  on  the  piano. 

"  Hush  !  Don't  you  cry  'Liz'beth  !  "  said  Dryfoos. 
"  Here  ;  take  my  handkerchief.  I  've  got  a  nice  lot 
in  the  cemetery,  and  I  'm  goin'  to  have  a  monument, 
with  two  lambs  on  it — like  the  one  you  always  liked 
so  much.  It  ain't  the  fashion,  any  more,  to  have 
family  buryin'-grounds ;  they're  collectin'  'em  into 
the  cemeteries,  all  round." 


302  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  I  reckon  I  got  to  bear  it,"  said  his  wife,  muffling 
her  face  in  his  handkerchief.  "  And  I  suppose  the 
Lord  kin  find  me,  wherever  I  am.  But  I  always  did 
want  to  lay  just  there.  You  mind  how  we  used  to 
go  out  and  set  there,  after  milkin',  and  watch  the 
sun  go  down,  and  talk  about  where  their  angels  was, 
and  try  to  figger  it  out  1 " 

"  I  remember,  'Liz'beth." 

The  man's  voice  in  the  drawing-room  sang  a  snatch 
of  French  song,  insolent,  mocking,  salient ;  and  then 
Christine's  attempted  the  same  strain,  and  another 
cry  of  laughter  from  Mela  followed. 

"  Well,  I  always  did  expect  to  lay  there.  But  I 
reckon  it's  all  right  It  won't  be  a  great  while, 
now,  any  way.  Jacob,  I  don't  believe  I  'm  agoin'  to 
live  very  long.  I  know  it  don't  agree  with  me 
here." 

"Oh,  I  guess  it  does,  'Liz'beth.  You're  just  a 
little  pulled  down  with  the  weather.  It's  coming 
spring,  and  you  feel  it ;  but  the  doctor  says  you  're 
all  right  I  stopped  in,  on  the  way  up ;  and  he  says 
so." 

"I  reckon  he  don't  know  everything,"  the  old 
woman  persisted.  "I've  been  runnin'  down  ever 
since  we  left  Moffitt,  and  I  didn't  feel  any  too  well 
there,  even.  It 's  a  very  strange  thing,  Jacob,  that 
the  richer  you  git,  the  less  you  ain't  able  to  stay 
where  you  want  to,  dead  or  alive." 

"It's  for  the  children  we  do  it,"  said  Dryfoos. 
"  We  got  to  give  them  their  chance  in  the  world." 

"  Oh,  the  world  !     They  ought  to  bear  the  yok« 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       303 

in  their  youth,  like  we  done.  I  know  it's  what 
Coonrod  would  like  to  do." 

Dryfoos  got  upon  his  feet.  "If  Coonrod  '11  mind 
his  own  business,  and  do  what  I  want  him  to,  he  '11 
have  yoke  enough  to  bear."  He  moved  from  his 
wife,  without  further  effort  to  comfort  her,  and 
pottered  heavily  out  into  the  dining-room.  Beyond 
its  obscurity  stretched  the  glitter  of  the  deep  draw- 
ing-room. His  feet,  in  their  broad,  flat  slippers, 
made  no  sound  on  the  dense  carpet,  and  he  came 
unseen  upon  the  little  group  there  near  the  piano. 
Mela  perched  upon  the  stool  with  her  back  to  the 
keys,  and  Beaton  bent  over  Christine,  who  sat  with 
a  banjo  in  her  lap,  letting  him  take  her  hands  and 
put  them  in  the  right  place  on  the  instrument.  Her 
face  was  radiant  with  happiness,  and  Mela  was 
watching  her  with  foolish,  unselfish  pleasure  in  her 
bliss. 

There  was  nothing  wrong  in  the  affair  to  a  man  of 
Dryfoos's  traditions  and  perceptions,  and  if  it  had 
been  at  home  in  the  farm  sitting-room,  or  even  in 
his  parlour  at  Moffitt,  he  would  not  have  minded  a 
young  man's  placing  his  daughter's  hands  on  a  banjo, 
or  even  holding  them  there ;  it  would  have  seemed 
a  proper  attention  from  him  if  he  was  courting  her. 
But  here,  in  such  a  house  as  this,  with  the  daughter 
of  a  man  who  had  made  as  much  money  as  he  had, 
he  did  not  know  but  it  was  a  liberty.  He  felt  the 
angry  doubt  of  it  which  beset  him  in  regard  to  so 
many  experiences  of  his  changed  life ;  he  wanted  to 
show  his  sense  of  it,  if  it  was  a  liberty,  but  he  did 


304       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

not  know  how,  and  he  did  not  know  that  it  was  so. 
Besides,  he  could  not  help  a  touch  of  the  pleasure  in 
Christine's  happiness  which  Mela  showed ;  and  he 
would  have  gone  back  to  the  library,  if  he  could, 
without  being  discovered. 

But  Beaton  had  seen  him,  and  Dryfoos,  with  a 
nonchalant  nod  to  the  young  man,  came  forward. 
"  What  you  got  there,  Christine  1 " 

"  A  banjo,"  said  the  girl,  blushing  in  her  father's 
presence. 

Mela  gurgled.  "  Mr.  Beaton  is  learnun'  her  the 
first  position." 

Beaton  was  not  embarrassed.  He  was  in  evening 
dress,  and  his  face,  pointed  with  its  brown  beard, 
showed  extremely  handsome  above  the  expanse  of 
his  broad  white  shirt-front.  He  gave  back  as  non- 
chalant a  nod  as  he  had  got,  and  without  further 
greeting  to  Dryfoos,  he  said  to  Christine,  "No,  no. 
You  must  keep  your  hand  and  arm  so."  He  held 
them  in  position.  "There  !  Now  strike  with  your 
right  hand.  See  ? " 

"I  don't  believe  I  can  ever  learn,"  said  the  girl, 
with  a  fond  upward  look  at  him. 

"  Oh  yes,  you  can,"  said  Beaton. 

They  both  ignored  Dryfoos  in  the  little  play  of 
protests  which  followed,  and  he  said,  half  jocosely, 
half  suspiciously,  "And  is  the  banjo  the  fashion, 
now  ? "  He  remembered  it  as  the  emblem  of  low- 
down  show  business,  and  associated  it  with  end-men, 
and  blackened  faces,  and  grotesque  shirt  collars. 

"  It 's  all  the  rage,"  Mela  shouted  in  answer  for  alL 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       305 

"Everybody  plays  it.  Mr.  Beaton  borrowed  this 
from  a  lady  friend  of  his.  " 

"  Humph  !  Pity  I  got  you  a  piano,  then,"  said  Dry- 
foos.  "  A  banjo  would  have  been  cheaper." 

Beaton  so  far  admitted  him  to  the  conversation  as 
to  seem  reminded  of  the  piano  by  his  mentioning  it. 
He  said  to  Mela,  "  Oh,  won't  you  just  strike  those 
chords  1 "  and  as  Mela  wheeled  about  and  beat  the 
keys,  he  took  the  banjo  from  Christine  and  sat  down 
with  it.  "  This  way  ! "  He  strummed  it,  and  mur- 
mured the  tune  Dryfoos  had  heard  him  singing  from 
the  library,  while  he  kept  his  beautiful  eyes  floating 
on  Christine's.  "You  try  that,  now;  it's  very 
simple." 

"  Where  is  Mrs.  Mandel  ? "  Dryfoos  demanded, 
trying  to  assert  himself. 

Neither  of  the  girls  seemed  to  have  heard  him 
at  first  in  the  chatter  they  broke  into  over  what 
Beaton  proposed.  Then  Mela  said  absently,  "Oh, 
she  had  to  go  out  to  see  one  of  her  friends  that 's 
sick,"  and  she  struck  the  piano  keys.  "  Come ;  try 
it,  Chris ! " 

Dryfoos  turned  about  unheeded,  and  went  back  to 
the  library.  He  would  have  liked  to  put  Beaton  out 
of  his  house,  and  in  his  heart  he  burned  against  him 
as  a  contumacious  hand ;  he  would  have  liked  to  dis- 
charge him  from  the  art  department  of  Every  Other 
Week  at  once.  But  he  was  aware  of  not  having 
treated  Beaton  with  much  ceremony,  and  if  the 
young  man  had  returned  his  behaviour  in  kind,  with 
an  electrical  response  to  his  own  feeling,  had  he  any 


306       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

right  to  complain  1  After  all,  there  was  no  harm  in 
his  teaching  Christine  the  banjo. 

His  wife  still  sat  looking  into  the  fire.  "  I  can't 
see,"  she  said,  "as  we've  got  a  bit  more  comfort  of 
our  lives,  Jacob,  because  we  Ve  got  such  piles  and 
piles  of  money.  I  wisht  to  gracious  we  was  back  on 
the  farm  this  minute.  I  wisht  you  had  held  out 
ag'inst  the  childern  about  sellin'  it ;  'twould  'a'  bin 
the  best  thing  fur  'em,  I  say.  I  believe  in  my  soul 
they  '11  git  spoiled  here  in  New  York.  I  kin  see  a 
change  in  'em  a'ready — in  the  girls." 

Dryfoos  stretched  himself  on  the  lounge  again. 
"I  can't  see  as  Coonrod  is  much  comfort,  either. 
Why  ain't  he  here  with  his  sisters  ?  What  does  all 
that  work  of  his  on  the  East  side  amount  to  1  It 
seems  as  if  he  done  it  to  cross  me,  as  much  as  any- 
thing." Dryfoos  complained  to  his  wife  on  the  basis 
of  mere  affectional  habit,  which  in  married  life  often 
survives  the  sense  of  intellectual  equality.  He  did 
not  expect  her  to  reason  with  him,  but  there  was 
help  in  her  listening,  and  though  she  could  only 
soothe  his  fretfulness  with  soft  answers  which  were 
often  wide  of  the  purpose,  he  still  went  to  her  for 
solace.  "  Here,  I  've  gone  into  this  newspaper  busi- 
ness, or  whatever  it  is,  on  his  account,  and  he  don't 
seem  any  more  satisfied  than  ever.  I  can  see  he 
hain't  got  his  heart  in  it." 

"  The  pore  boy  tries  ;  I  know  he  does,  Jacob ;  and 
he  wants  to  please  you.  But  he  give  up  a  good  deal 
when  he  give  up  bein'  a  preacher ;  I  s'pose  we  ought 
remember  that." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        307 

"A  preacher!"  sneered  Dryfoos.  "I  reckon 
bein'  a  preacher  wouldn't  satisfy  him  now.  He  had 
the  impudence  to  tell  me  this  afternoon  that  he 
would  like  to  be  a  priest ;  and  he  threw  it  up  to  me 
that  he  never  could  be,  because  I  'd  kept  him  from 
studyin'." 

"He  don't  mean  a  Catholic  priest — not  a  Roman 
one,  Jacob,"  the  old  woman  explained  wistfully. 
"  He 's  told  me  all  about  it.  They  ain't  the  kind  o' 
Catholics  we  been  used  to ;  some  sort  of  'Pisco- 
palians ;  and  they  do  a  heap  o'  good  amongst  the 
poor  folks  over  there.  He  says  we  ain't  got  any 
idea  how  folks  lives  in  them  tenement-houses,  hun- 
derds  of  'em  in  one  house,  and  whole  families  in  a 
room ;  and  it  burns  in  his  heart  to  help  'em  like 
them  Fathers,  as  he  calls  'em,  that  gives  their  lives 
to  it  He  can't  be  a  Father,  he  says,  because  he 
can't  git  the  eddication,  now;  but  he  can  be  a 
Brother ;  and  I  can't  find  a  word  to  say  ag'inst  it, 
when  it  gits  to  talkin',  Jacob." 

"I  ain't  saying  anything  against  his  priests, 
'Liz'beth,"  said  Dryfoos.  "  They  're  all  well  enough 
in  their  way  ;  they  Ve  given  up  their  lives  to  it,  and 
it 's  a  matter  of  business  with  them,  like  any  other. 
But  what  I'm  .talking  about  now  is  Coonrod.  I 
don't  object  to  his  doin'  all  the  charity  he  wants  to, 
and  the  Lord  knows  I've  never  been  stingy  with 
him  about  it.  He  might  have  all  the  money  he 
wants,  to  give  round  any  way  he  pleases." 

"  That 's  what  I  told  him  once,  but  he  says  money 
ain't  the  thing — or  not  the  only  thing  you  got  to 
X 


308       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

give  to  them  poor  folks.  You  got  to  give  your  time, 
and  your  knowledge,  and  your  love — I  don't  know 
what  all — you  got  to  give  yourself,  if  you  expect  to 
help  'em.  That 's  what  Coonrod  says." 

"  "Well,  I  can  tell  him  that  charity  begins  at  home," 
said  Dryfoos,  sitting  up,  in  his  impatience.  "  And 
he  'd  better  give  himself  to  us  a  little — to  his  old 
father  and  mother.  And  his  sisters.  What 's  he 
doin'  goin'  off  there,  to  his  meetings,  and  I  don't 
know  what  all,  an'  leavin'  them  here  alone  ? " 

"  Why,  ain't  Mr.  Beaton  with  'em  ? "  asked  the  old 
woman.  "  I  thought  I  beared  his  voice." 

"  Mr.  Beaton  !  Of  course,  he  is  !  And  who 's  Mr. 
Beaton,  anyway?" 

"  WThy,  ain't  he  one  of  the  men  in  Coonrod's 
office  ?  I  thought  I  beared " 

"  Yes,  he  is  !  But  who  is  he  1  What's  he  doing 
round  here  ?  Is  he  makin'  up  to  Christine  ? " 

"  I  reckon  he  is.  From  Mely's  talk,  she  's  about 
crazy  over  the  fellow.  Don't  you  like  him,  Jacob  1 " 

"  I  don't  know  him,  or  what  he  is.  He  hasn't  got 
any  manners.  Who  brought  him  here  1  How  'd  he 
come  to  come,  in  the  first  place  ?  " 

"Mr  Fulkerson  brung  him,  I  believe,"  said  the  old 
woman  patiently. 

"  Fulkerson  ! "  Dryfoos  snorted.  "  Where 's  Mrs. 
Mandel,  I  should  like  to  know  ?  He  brought  her, 
too.  Does  she  go  trapsein'  off  this  way,  every  even- 
ing?" 

"No,  she  seems  to  be  here  pretty  regular  most  o' 
the  time.  I  don't  know  how  we  could  ever  git  along 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  309 

without  her,  Jacob ;  she  seems  to  know  just  what  to 
do,  and  the  girls  would  be  ten  times  as  outbreakin* 
without  her.  I  hope  you  ain't  thinkin'  o'  turnin'  her 
off,  Jacob  1 " 

Dryfoos  did  not  think  it  necessary  to  answer  such 
a  question.  "  It 's  all  Fulkerson,  Fulkerson,  Fulker- 
son.  It  seems  to  me  that  Fulkerson  about  runs  this 
family.  He  brought  Mrs.  Mandel,  and  he  brought 
that  Beaton,  and  he  brought  that  Boston  fellow  !  I 
guess  I  give  him  a  dose,  though ;  and  I  '11  learn 
Fulkerson  that  he  can't  have  everything  his  own  way. 
I  don't  want  anybody  to  help  me  spend  my  money. 
I  made  it,  and  I  can  manage  it.  I  guess  Mr.  Fulker- 
son can  bear  a  little  watching,  now.  He  's  been 
travelling  pretty  free,  and  he 's  got  the  notion  he 's 
driving,  may  be.  I  'm  agoing  to  look  after  that  book 
a  little  myself." 

"  You  '11  kill  yourself,  Jacob,"  said  his  wife,  "  tryin' 
to  do  so  many  things.  And  what  is  it  all  fur  1  I 
don't  see  as  we  're  better  off,  any,  for  all  the  money. 
It 's  just  as  much  care  as  it  used  to  be  when  we  was 
all  there  on  the  farm  together.  I  wisht  we  could  go 
back,  Ja " 

"  We  can't  go  back  ! "  shouted  the  old  man  fiercely. 
"  There  's  no  farm  any  more  to  go  back  to.  The 
fields  is  full  of  gas  wells  and  oil  wells  and  hell  holes 
generally ;  the  house  is  tore  down,  and  the  barn 's 
goin' " 

"  The  barn  ! "  gasped  the  old  woman.     "  Oh,  my  ! " 

"  If  I  was  to  give  all  I  'm  worth  this  minute,  we 
couldn't  go  back  to  the  farm,  any  more  than  them 


310  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

girls  in  there  could  go  back  and  be  little  children.  I 
don't  say  we  're  any  better  off,  for  the  money.  I  Ve 
got  more  of  it  now  than  I  ever  had ;  and  there  's  no 
end  to  the  luck  ;  it  pours  in.  But  I  feel  like  I  was 
tied  hand  and  foot.  I  don't  know  which  way  to 
move ;  I  don't  know  what 's  best  to  do  about  any- 
thing. The  money  don't  seem  to  buy  anything  but 
more  and  more  care  and  trouble.  We  got  a  big 
house  that  we  ain't  at  home  in  ;  and  we  got  a  lot  of 
hired  girls  round  under  our  feet  that  hinder  and  don't 
help.  Our  children  don't  mind  us,  and  we  got  no 
friends  or  neighbours.  But  it  had  to  be.  I  couldn't 
help  but  sell  the  farm,  and  we  can't  go  back  to  it, 
for  it  ain't  there.  So  don't  you  say  anything  more 
about  it,  'Liz'beth." 

"  Pore  Jacob ! "  said  his  wife.     "  Well,  I  woon't, 
dear." 


IV. 


IT  was  clear  to  Beaton  that  Dryfoos  distrusted  him; 
and  the  fact  heightened  his  pleasure  in  Christine's 
liking  for  him.  He  was  as  sure  of  this  as  he  was  of 
the  other,  though  he  was  not  so  sure  of  any  reason 
for  his  pleasure  in  it.  She  had  her  charm ;  the  charm 
of  wildness  to  which  a  certain  wildness  in  himself 
responded ;  and  there  were  times  when  his  fancy 
contrived  a  common  future  for  them,  which  would 
have  a  prosperity  forced  from  the  old  fellow's  love  of 
the  girl.  Beaton  liked  the  idea  of  this  compulsion 
better  than  he  liked  the  idea  of  the  money  ;  there 
was  something  a  little  repulsive  in  that ;  he  imagined 
himself  rejecting  it ;  he  almost  wished  he  was 
enough  in  love  with  the  girl  to  marry  her  without 
it ;  that  would  be  fine.  He  was  taken  with  her  in  a 
certain  measure,  in  a  certain  way ;  the  question  was 
in  what  measure,  in  Avhat  way. 

It  was  partly  to  escape  from  this  question  that  he 
hurried  down  town,  and  decided  to  spend  with  the 
Leightons  the  hour  remaining  on  his  hands  before  it 
was  time  to  go  to  the  reception  for  which  he  was 
dressed.  It  seemed  to  him  important  that  he  should 
see  Alma  Leighton.  After  all,  it  was  her  charm  that 


312       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

was  most  abiding  with  him;  perhaps  it  was  to  be 
final.  He  found  himself  very  happy  in  his  present 
relations  with  her.  She  had  dropped  that  barrier  of 
pretences  and  ironical  surprise.  It  seemed  to  him 
that  they  had  gone  back  to  the  old  ground  of  com- 
mon artistic  interest  which  he  had  found  so  pleasant 
the  summer  before.  Apparently  she  and  her  mother 
had  both  forgiven  his  neglect  of  them  in  the  first 
months  of  their  stay  in  New  York ;  he  was  sure  that 
Mrs.  Leighton  liked  him  as  well  as  ever,  and  if  there 
was  still  something  a  little  provisional  in  Alma's 
manner  at  times,  it  was  something  that  piqued  more 
than  it  discouraged;  it  made  him  curious,  not 
anxious. 

He  found  the  young  ladies  with  Fulkerson  when 
he  rang.  He  seemed  to  be  amusing  them  both,  and 
they  were  both  amused  beyond  the  merit  of  so  small 
a  pleasantry,  Beaton  thought,  when  Fulkerson  said, 
"  Introduce  myself,  Mr.  Beaton :  Mr.  Fulkerson  of 
Every  Other  Week.  Think  I've  met  you  at  our 
place."  The  girls  laughed,  and  Alma  explained  that 
her  mother  was  not  very  well,  and  would  be  sorry 
not  to  see  him.  Then  she  turned,  as  he  felt,  per- 
versely, and  went  on  talking  with  Fulkerson  and  left 
him  to  Miss  Woodburn. 

She  finally  recognised  his  disappointment:  "Ah 
don't  often  get  a  chance  at  you,  Mr.  Beaton,  and 
Ah  'm  just  goin'  to  toak  yo'  to  death.  Yo'  have  been 
Soath  yo'self,  and  yo'  know  ho'  we  do  toak." 

"  I  've  survived  to  say  yes,"  Beaton  admitted. 

"Oh,  now,  do  you  think  we  toak  so  much  mo' 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  313 

than  you  do  in  the  No'th  ?  "  the  young  lady  depre- 
cated. 

"  I  don't  know.  I  only  know  you  can't  talk  too 
much  for  me.  I  should  like  to  hear  you  say  Soath 
and  hoase  and  aboat  for  the  rest  of  my  life." 

"  That 's  what  Ah  call  raght  personal,  Mr.  Beaton. 
Now  Ah  'm  goin'  to  be  personal,  too."  Miss  Wood- 
burn  flung  out  over  her  lap  the  square  of  cloth 
she  was  embroidering,  and  asked  him,  "Don't  you 
think  that 's  beautiful  1  Now,  as  an  awtust — a  great 
awtust  1 " 

"  As  a  great  awtust,  yes,"  said  Beaton,  mimicking 
her  accent.  "  If  I  were  less  than  great  I  might  have 
something  to  say  about  the  arrangement  of  colours. 
You  're  as  bold  and  original  as  Nature." 

"Really  1  Oh,  now,  do  tell  me  yo'  favo'ite  colo', 
Mr.  Beaton." 

"My  favourite  colour?  Bless  my  soul,  why 
should  I  prefer  any  ?  Is  blue  good,  or  red  wicked  ? 
Do  people  have  favourite  colours  ? "  Beaton  found 
himself  suddenly  interested. 

"  Of  co'se  they  do,"  answered  the  girl.     "  Don't 
awtusts  1 " 
,    "  I  never  heard  of  one  that  had — consciously." 

"  Is  it  possible  1  I  supposed  they  all  had.  Now 
mah  favo'ite  colo'  is  gawnet.  Don't  you  think  it 's  a 
pretty  colo'  ? " 

"  It  depends  upon  how  it 's  used.  Do  you  mean 
in  neckties  1 "  Beaton  stole  a  glance  at  the  one 
Fulkerson  was  wearing. 

Miss  Woodburn  laughed  with  her  face  bowed  upon 
VOL.  I— 14 


314  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

her  wrist.  "  Ah  do  think  you  gentlemen  in  the 
Xo'th  awe  ten  tahms  as  lahvely  as  the  ladies." 

"  Strange,"  said  Beaton.  "In  the  South — Soath, 
excuse  me  ! — I  made  the  observation  that  the  ladie& 
were  ten  times  as  lively  as  the  gentlemen.  What  is 
that  you  're  working  1  " 

"  This  ? "  Miss  "\Voodburn  gave  it  another  flirt, 
and  looked  at  it  with  a  glance  of  dawning  recogni- 
tion. "  Oh,  this  is  a  table-covah.  Wouldn't  you 
lahke  to  see  where  it 's  to  go  1 " 

"  Why,  certainly." 

"  Well,  if  you  '11  be  raght  good  I  'U  let  yo'  give  me 
some  professional  advass  about  putting  something  in 
the  co'ners  or  not,  when  you  have  seen  it  on  the 
table." 

She  rose  and  led  the  way  into  the  other  room. 
Beaton  knew  she  wanted  to  talk  with  him  about 
something  else  ;  but  he  waited  patiently  to  let  her 
play  her  comedy  out.  She  spread  the  cover  on  the 
table,  and  he  advised  her,  as  he  saw  she  wished,, 
against  putting  anything  in  the  corners ;  just  run  a 
line  of  her  stitch  around  the  edge,  he  said. 

"Mr.  Fulkerson  and  Ah,  why,  we  've  been  having 
a  regular  faght  aboat  it,"  she  commented.  "  But  we 
both  agreed,  fahnally,  to  leave  it  to  you  ;  Mr.  Ful- 
kerson said  you  'd  be  sure  to  be  raght.  Ah  'm  so  glad 
you  took  mah  sahde.  But  he  's  a  great  admahrer  of 
yours,  Mr.  Beaton,"  she  concluded  demurely,  sug- 
gestively. 

"  Is  he  1  Well,  I  'm  a  great  admirer  of  Fulker- 
son's,"  said  Beaton,  with  a  capricious  willingness  to 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  315 

humour  her  wish  to  talk  about  Fulkerson.  "  He  's  a 
capital  fellow;  generous,  magnanimous,  with  quite 
an  ideal  of  friendship,  and  an  eye  single  to  the  main 
chance  all  the  time.  He  would  advei'tise  Every 
Other  Week  on  his  family  vault." 

Miss  Woodburn  laughed,  and  said  she  should  tell 
him  what  Beaton  had  said. 

"  Do.  But  he 's  used  to  defamation  from  me,  and 
he  '11  think  you  're  joking." 

"Ah  suppose,"  said  Miss  Woodburn,  "that  he's 
quahte  the  tahpe  of  a  New  York  business  man."  She 
added,  as  if  it  followed  logically,  "He's  so  different 
from  what  I  thought  a  New  York  business  man 
would  be." 

"  It 's  your  Virginia  tradition  to  despise  business," 
said  Beaton  rudely. 

Miss  Woodburn  laughed  again.  "  Despahse  it  ? 
Mah  goodness  !  we  want  to  get  into  it,  and  '  woak  it 
fo'  all  it's  wo'th,'  as  Mr.  Fulkerson  says.  That 
tradition  is  all  past.  You  don't  know  what  the 
Soath  is  now.  Ah  suppose  mah  fathaw  despahses 
business,  but  he 's  a  tradition  himself,  as  Ah 
tell  him."  Beaton  would  have  enjoyed  joining  the 
young  lady  in  anything  she  might  be  going  to  say  in 
derogation  of  her  father,  but  he  restrained  himself, 
and  she  went  on  more  and  more  as  if  she  wished  to 
account  for  her  father's  habitual  hauteur  with 
Beaton,  if  not  to  excuse  it.  "  Ah  tell  him  he  don't 
iinderstand  the  rising  generation.  He  was  brought 
up  in  the  old  school,  and  he  thinks  we  Jre  all  just 
lahke  he  was  when  he  was  young,  with  all  those 


316  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

ahdeals  of  chivalry  and  family ;  but  mah  goodness  ! 
it 's  money  that  cyoants  no'adays  in  the  Soath,  just 
lahke  it  does  everywhere  else.  Ah  suppose,  if  we 
could  have  slavery  back  in  the  fawm  mah  fathaw 
thinks  it  could  have  been  brought  up  to,  when  the 
commercial  spirit  wouldn't  let  it  alone,  it  would  be 
the  best  thing ;  but  we  can't  have  it  back,  and  Ah 
tell  him  we  had  better  have  the  commercial  spirit,  as 
the  next  best  thing." 

Miss  Woodburn  went  on,  with  sufficient  loyalty 
and  piety,  to  expose  the  difference  of  her  own  and 
her  father's  ideals,  but  with  what  Beaton  thought 
less  reference  to  his  own  unsympathetic  attention  than 
to  a  knowledge  finally  of  the  personnel  and  materiel 
of  Every  Other  Week,  and  Mr.  Fulkerson's  relation  to 
the  enterprise.  "You  most  excuse  my  asking  so 
many  questions,  Mr.  Beaton.  You  know  it's  all 
mah  doing  that  we  awe  heah  in  New  York.  Ah 
just  told  mah  fathaw  that  if  he  was  evah  goin'  to  do 
anything  with  his  wrahtings,  he  had  got  to  come 
No'th,  and  Ah  made  him  come.  Ah  believe  he  'd 
have  stayed  in  the  Soath  all  his  lahfe.  And  now 
Mr.  Fulkerson  wants  him  to  let  his  editor  see  some 
of  his  wrahtings,  and  Ah  wanted  to  know  something 
aboat  the  magazine.  We  awe  a  great  deal  excited 
aboat  it  in  this  hoase,  you  know,  Mr.  Beaton,"  she 
concluded,  with  a  look  that  now  transferred  the 
Interest  from  Fulkerson  to  Alma.  She  led  the  way 
back  to  the  room  where  they  were  sitting,  and  went 
up  to  triumph  over  Fulkerson  with  Beaton's  decision 
about  the  table-cover. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       317 

Alma  was  left  with  Beaton  near  the  piano,  and  he 
began  to  talk  about  the  Dryfooses,  as  he  sat  down 
on  the  piano  stool.  He  said  he  had  been  giving 
Miss  Dryfoos  a  lesson  on  the  banjo  ;  he  had  borrowed 
the  banjo  of  Miss  Vance.  Then  he  struck  the  chord 
he  had  been  trying  to  teach  Christine,  and  played 
over  the  air  he  had  sung. 

"  How  do  you  like  that  ? "  he  asked,  whirling 
round. 

"  It  seems  rather  a  disrespectful  little  tune,  some- 
how," said  Alma  placidly. 

Beaton  rested  his  elbow  on  the  corner  of  the  piano, 
and  gazed  dreamily  at  her.  "  Your  perceptions  are 
wonderful.  It  is  disrespectful.  I  played  it,  up 
there,  because  I  felt  disrespectful  to  them." 

"  Do  you  claim  that  as  a  merit  ? " 

"  No,  I  state  it  as  a  fact.  How  can  you  respect 
such  people  ?" 

"You  might  respect  yourself,  then,"  said  the  girl. 
"  Or  perhaps  that  wouldn't  be  so  easy,  either." 

"  No,  it  wouldn't.  I  like  to  have  you  say  these 
things  to  me,"  said  Beaton  impartially, 

"  Well,  I  like  to  say  them,"  Alma  returned. 

"  They  do  me  good." 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know  that  that  was  my  motive." 

"There  is  no  one  like  you — no  one,"  said  Beaton, 
as  if  apostrophising  her  in  her  absence.  "  To  come 
from  that  house,  with  its  assertions  of  money — you 
can  hear  it  chink ;  you  can  smell  the  foul  old  bank- 
notes ;  it  stifles  you — into  an  atmosphere  like  this, 
is  like  coming  into  another  world." 


318  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"Thank  you,"  said  Alma.  "I'm  glad  there  isn't 
that  unpleasant  odour  here ;  but  I  wish  there  was  a 
little  more  of  the  chinking." 

"  No,  no  !  Don't  say  that !  "  he  implored.  "  I 
like  to  think  that  there  is  one  soul  uncontaminated 
by  the  sense  of  money  in  this  big,  brutal,  sordid  city." 

"You  mean  two,"  said  Alma,  with  modesty.  "But 
if  you  stifle  at  the  Dryfooses',  why  do  you  go  there  ?" 

"  Why  do  I  go  1 "  he  mused.  "  Don't  you  believe 
in  knowing  all  the  natures,  the  types,  you  can  ? 
Those  girls  are  a  strange  study :  the  young  one  is  a 
simple,  earthly  creature,  as  common  as  an  oat-field ; 
and  the  other  a  sort  of  sylvan  life :  fierce,  flashing, 
feline- 
Alma  burst  out  into  a  laugh.  "  What  apt  allitera- 
tion !  And  do  they  like  being  studied  ?  I  should 
think  the  sylvan  life  might — scratch." 

"  No,"  said  Beaton,  with  melancholy  absence,  "  it 
only — purrs." 

The  girl  felt  a  rising  indignation.  "Well,  then, 
Mr.  Beaton;  I  should  hope  it  would  scratch,  and 
bite,  too.  I  think  you've  no  business  to  go  about 
studying  people,  as  you  do.  It 's  abominable." 

"  Go  on,"  said  the  young  man.  "That  Puritan  con- 
science of  yours  !  It  appeals  to  the  old  Covenanter 
strain  in  me — likeavoice  of  pre-existence.  Go  on ' 

"  Oh,  if  I  went  on  I  should  merely  say  it  was  not 
only  abominable,  but  contemptible." 

"You  could  be  my  guardian  angel,  Alma,"  said 
the  young  man,  making  his  eyes  more  and  more 
slumbrous  and  dreamy. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  319 

"  Stuff !     I  hope  I  have  a  soul  above  buttons  ! " 

He  smiled,  as  she  rose,  and  followed  her  across  the 
room.  "  Good  night,  Mr.  Beaton,"  she  said. 

Miss  Woodburn  and  Fulkerson  came  in  from  the 
other  room.  "  What !  You  're  not  going,  Beaton  1 " 

"  Yes  ;  I  'm  going  to  a  reception.  I  stopped  in  on 
my  way." 

"  To  kill  time,"  Alma  explained. 

"Well,"  said  Fulkerson  gallantly,  "this  is  the 
last  place  I  should  like  to  do  it.  But  I  guess  I'd 
better  be  going  too.  It  has  sometimes  occurred  to 
me  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  staying  too  late. 
But  with  Brother  Beaton,  here,  just  starting  in  for 
an  evening's  amusement,  it  does  seem  a  little  early 
yet.  Can't  you  urge  me  to  stay,  somebody  1 " 

The  two  girls  laughed,  and  Miss  Woodburn  said, 
"  Mr.  Beaton  is  such  a  butterfly  of  fashion  !  Ah 
wish  Ah  was  on  mah  way  to  a  pawty.  Ah  feel 
quahte  envious." 

"But  he  didn't  say  it  to  make  you,"  Alma  ex- 
plained with  meek  softness. 

"Well,  we  can't  all  be  swells.  Where  is  your 
party,  anyway,  Beaton  1 "  asked  Fulkerson.  "  How 
do  you  manage  to  get  your  invitations  to  those 
things  ?  I  suppose  a  fellow  has  to  keep  hinting 
round  pretty  lively,  heigh  ?  " 

Beaton  took  these  mockeries  serenely,  and  shook 
hands  with  Miss  Woodburn,  with  the  effect  of 
having  already  shaken  hands  with  Alma,  She  stood 
with  hers  clasped  behind  her. 


V. 


BEATON  went  away  with  the  smile  on  his  face 
which  he  had  kept  in  listening  to  Fulkerson,  and 
carried  it  with  him  to  the  reception.  He  believed 
that  Alma  was  vexed  with  him  for  more  personal 
reasons  than  she  had  implied ;  it  flattered  him  that 
she  should  have  resented  what  he  told  her  of  the 
Dryfooses.  She  had  scolded  him  in  their  behalf 
apparently;  but  really  because  he  had  made  her 
jealous  by  his  interest,  of  whatever  kind,  in  some 
one  else.  What  followed,  had  followed  naturally. 
Unless  she  had  been  quite  a  simpleton  she  could  not 
have  met  his  provisional  love-making  on  any  other 
terms;  and  the  reason  why  Beaton  chiefly  liked 
Alma  Leighton  was  that  she  was  not  a  simpleton. 
Even  up  in  the  country,  when  she  was  overawed  by 
his  acquaintance,  at  first,  she  was  not  very  deeply 
overawed,  and  at  times  she  was  not  overawed  at  alL 
At  such  times  she  astonished  him  by  taking  his  most 
solemn  histrionics  with  flippant  incredulity,  and  even 
burlesquing  them.  But  he  could  see,  all  the  same, 
that  he  had  caught  her  fancy,  and  he  admired  the 
skill  with  which  she  punished  his  neglect  when  they 
met  in  New  York.  He  had  really  come  very  near 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       321 

forgetting  the  Leightons ;  the  intangible  obligations 
of  mutual  kindness  which  hold  some  men  so  fast, 
hung  loosely  upon  him  ;  it  would  not  have  hurt  him 
to  break  from  them  altogether ;  but  when  he  recog- 
nised them  at  last,  he  found  that  it  strengthened 
them  indefinitely  to  have  Alma  ignore  them  so  com- 
pletely. If  she  had  been  sentimental,  or  softly 
reproachful,  that  would  have  been  the  end ;  he  could 
not  have  stood  it ;  he  would  have  had  to  drop  her. 
But  when  she  met  him  on  his  own  ground,  and 
obliged  him  to  be  sentimental,  the  game  was  in  her 
hands.  Beaton  laughed,  now,  when  he  thought  of 
that,  and  he  said  to  himself  that  the  girl  had  grown 
immensely  since  she  had  come  to  New  York ;  nothing 
seemed  to  have  been  lost  upon  her ;  she  must  have 
kept  her  eyes  uncommonly  wide  open.  He  noticed 
that  especially  in  their  talks  over  her  work ;  she  had 
profited  by  everything  she  had  seen  and  heard ;  she 
had  all  of  Wetmore's  ideas  pat ;  it  amused  Beaton 
to  see  how  she  seized  every  useful  word  that  he 
dropped,  too,  and  turned  him  to  technical  account 
whenever  she  could.  He  liked  that ;  she  had  a  great 
deal  of  talent ;  there  was  no  question  of  that ;  if  she 
were  a  man  there  could  be  no  question  of  her  future. 
He  began  to  construct  a  future  for  her ;  it  included 
provision  for  himself  too ;  it  was  a  common  future, 
in  which  their  lives  and  work  were  united. 

He  was  full  of  the  glow  of  its  prosperity  when  he 
met  Margaret  Vance  at  the  reception. 

The  house  was  one  where  people  might  chat  a 
long  time  together  without  publicly  committing 
14* 


322       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

themselves  to  an  interest  in  each  other  except  such 
as  grew  out  of  each  other's  ideas.  Miss  Vance  was 
there  because  she  united  in  her  catholic  sympathies 
or  ambitions  the  objects  of  the  fashionable  people 
and  of  the  aesthetic  people  who  met  there  on  common 
ground.  It  was  almost  the  only  house  in  New  York 
where  this  happened  often,  and  it  did  not  happen 
very  often  there.  It  was  a  literary  house,  primarily, 
with  artistic  qualifications,  and  the  frequenters  of  it 
were  mostly  authors  and  artists ;  Wetmore,  who 
was  always  trying  to  fit  everything  with  a  phrase, 
said  it  was  the  unfrequenters  who  were  fashionable. 
There  was  great  ease  there,  and  simplicity  ;  and  if 
there  was  not  distinction,  it  was  not  for  want  of 
distinguished  people,  but  because  there  seems  to  be 
some  solvent  in  New  York  life  that  reduces  all  men 
to  a  common  level,  that  touches  everybody  with  its 
potent  magic  and  brings  to  the  surface  the  deeply 
underlying  nobody.  The  effect  for  some  tempera- 
ments, for  consciousness,  for  egotism,  is  admirable ; 
for  curiosity,  for  hero-worship,  it  is  rather  baffling. 
It  is  the  spirit  of  the  street  transferred  to  the  draw- 
ing-room ;  indiscriminating,  levelling,  but  doubtless 
finally  wholesome,  and  witnessing  the  immensity 
of  the  place,  if  not  consenting  to  the  grandeur  of 
reputations  or  presences. 

Beaton  now  denied  that  this  house  represented  a 
salon  at  all,  in  the  old  sense ;  and  he  held  that  the 
salon  was  impossible,  even  undesirable,  with  us, 
when  Miss  Vance  sighed  for  it.  At  any  rate,  he 
said  that  this  turmoil  of  coming  and  going,  this 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       323 

bubble  and  babble,  this  cackling  and  hissing  of  con- 
versation was  not  the  expression  of  any  such  civilisa- 
tion as  had  created  the  salon.  Here,  he  owned,  were 
the  elements  of  intellectual  delightfulness,  but  he 
said  their  assemblage  in  such  quantity  alone  denied 
the  salon;  there  was  too  much  of  a  good  thing. 
The  French  word  implied  a  long  evening  of  general 
talk  among  the  guests,  crowned  with  a  little  chicken 
at  supper,  ending  at  cock-crow.  Here  was  tea,  with 
milk  or  with  lemon — baths  of  it — and  claret  cup  for 
the  hardier  spirits  throughout  the  evening.  It  was 
very  nice,  very  pleasant,  but  it  was  not  the  little 
chicken — not  the  salon.  In  fact,  he  affirmed,  the 
salon  descended  from  above,  out  of  the  great  world, 
and  included  the  aesthetic  world  in  it.  But  our 
great  world — the  rich  people,  were  stupid,  with  no 
wish  to  be  otherwise;  they  were  not  even  curious 
about  authors  and  artists.  Beaton  fancied  himself 
speaking  impartially,  and  so  he  allowed  himself  to 
speak  bitterly ;  he  said  that  in  no  other  city  in  the 
world,  except  Vienna,  perhaps,  were  such  people  so 
little  a  part  of  society. 

"  It  isn't  altogether  the  rich  people's  fault,"  said 
Margaret ;  and  she  spoke  impartially,  too.  "  I 
don't  believe  that  the  literary  men  and  the  artists 
would  like  a  salon  that  descended  to  them.  Madame 
Geoffrin,  you  know,  was  very  plebeian ;  her  husband 
was  a  business  man  of  some  sort." 

"He  would  have  been  a  howling  swell  in  New 
York,"  said  Beaton,  still  impartially. 

Wetmore  came  up  to  their  corner,  with  a  scroll 
Y 


324  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

of  bread  and  butter  in  one  hand  and  a  cup  of  tea  in 
the  other.  Large  and  fat,  and  clean  shaven,  he 
looked  like  a  monk  in  evening  dress. 

"  We  were  talking  about  salons,"  said  Margaret. 

"  Why  don't  you  open  a  saloon  yourself  1 "  asked 
Wetmore,  breathing  thickly  from  the  anxiety  of 
getting  through  the  crowd  without  spilling  his  tea. 

"  Like  poor  Lady  Barberina  Lemon  1 "  said  the 
girl,  with  a  laugh.  "  What  a  good  story !  That 
idea  of  a  woman  who  couldn't  be  interested  in  any 
of  the  arts  because  she  was  socially  and  traditionally 
the  material  of  them !  We  can  never  reach  that 
height  of  nonchalance  in  this  country." 

"  Not  if  we  tried  seriously  1 "  suggested  the  painter. 
*'  I  've  an  idea  that  if  the  Americans  ever  gave  their 
minds  to  that  sort  of  thing,  they  could  take  the 
palm — or  the  cake,  as  Beaton  here  would  say — just 
as  they  do  in  everything  else.  When  we  do  have 
an  aristocracy,  it  will  be  an  .aristocracy  that  will  go 
ahead  of  anything  the  world  has  ever  seen.  Why 
don't  somebody  make  a  beginning,  and  go  in  openly 
for  an  ancestry,  and  a  lower  middle  class,  and  an 
hereditary  legislature,  and  all  the  rest  ?  We  Ve  got 
liveries,  and  crests,  and  palaces,  and  caste  feeling. 
We  're  all  right  as  far  as  we  Ve  gone,  and  we  Ve  got 
the  money  to  go  any  length." 

"  Like  your  natural-gas  man,  Mr.  Beaton,"  said  the 
girl,  with  a  smiling  glance  round  at  him. 

"  Ah ! "  said  Wetmore,  stirring  his  tea,  "  has 
Beaton  got  a  natural-gas  man  1 " 

"My  natural-gas   man,"  said    Beaton,   ignoring 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  325 

Wetmore's  question,  "  doesn't  know  how  to  live  in, 
his  palace  yet,  and  I  doubt  if  he  has  any  caste  feeling. 
I  fancy  his  family  believe  themselves  victims  of  it. 
They  say — one  of  the  young  ladies  does — that  she 
never  saw  such  an  unsociable  place  as  New  York ; 
nobody  calls." 

"  That 's  good  ! "  said  Wetmore.  "  I  suppose 
they  're  all  ready  for  company  too  :  good  cook,  furni- 
ture, servants,  carriages  1 " 

"  Galore,"  said  Beaton. 

"  Well,  that 's  too  bad.  There 's  a  chance  for  you, 
Miss  Vance.  Doesn't  your  philanthropy  embrace  the 
socially  destitute  as  well  as  the  financially  ?  Just 
think  of  a  family  like  that,  without  a  friend,  in  a 
great  city  !  I  should  think  common  charity  had  a 
duty  there — not  to  mention  the  uncommon." 

He  distinguished  that  kind  as  Margaret's  by  a 
glance  of  ironical  deference.  She  had  a  repute  for 
good  works  which  was  out  of  proportion  io  the 
works,  as  it  always  is,  but  she  was  really  active  in 
that  way,  under  the  vague  obligation,  which  we  now 
all  feel,  to  be  helpful.  She  was  of  the  church  which 
seems  to  have  found  a  reversion  to  the  imposing 
ritual  of  the  past  the  way  back  to  the  early  ideals  of 
Christian  brotherhood. 

"Oh,  they  seem  to  have  Mr.  Beaton,"  Margaret 
answered,  and  Beaton  felt  obscurely  nattered  by  her 
reference  to  his  patronage  of  the  Dryfooses. 

He  explained  to  Wetmore,  "  They  have  me  because 
they  partly  own  me.  Dryf oos  is  Fulkerson's  financial 
backer  in  Every  Other  Week." 


326       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Is  that  so  ?  "Well,  that 's  interesting  too.  Aren't 
you  rather  astonished,  Miss  Vance,  to  see  what  a 
pretty  thing  Beaton  is  making  of  that  magazine  of 
his?" 

"  Oh,"  said  Margaret,  "  it 's  so  very  nice,  every 
•way  ;  it  makes  you  feel  as  if  you  did  have  a  country, 
after  all.  It 's  as  chic — that  detestable  little  word  ! — 
as  those  new  French  books." 

"  Beaton  modelled  it  on  them.  But  you  mustn't 
suppose  he  does  everything  about  Every  Other  Week ; 
he  'd  like  you  to.  Beaton,  you  haven't  come  up  to 
that  cover  of  your  first  number,  since.  That  was  the 
design  of  one  of  my  pupils,  Miss  Vance — a  little  girl 
that  Beaton  discovered  down  in  New  Hampshire  last 
summer." 

"  Oh  yes.  And  have  you  great  hopes  of  her,  Mr. 
Wetmore  1 " 

"  She  seems  to  have  more  love  of  it  and  knack  for 
it  than  any  one  of  her  sex  I  Ve  seen  yet.  It  really 
looks  like  a  case  of  art  for  art's  sake,  at  times.  But 
you  can't  tell.  They  're  liable  to  get  married  at  any 
moment,  you  know.  Look  here,  Beaton,  when  your 
natural-gas  man  gets  to  the  picture-buying  stage  in 
his  development,  just  remember  your  old  friends, 
will  you  1  You  know,  Miss  Vance,  those  new  fellows 
have  their  regular  stages.  They  never  know  what 
to  do  with  their  money,  but  they  find  out  that 
people  buy  pictures,  at  one  point.  They  shut  your 
things  up  in  their  houses  where  nobody  comes  ;  and 
after  a  while  they  overeat  themselves — they  don't 
know  what  else  to  do — and  die  of  apoplexy,  and 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  327 

leave  your  pictures  to  a  gallery,  and  then  they  see 
the  light.  It 's  slow,  but  it 's  pretty  sure.  Well,  I 
see  Beaton  isn't  going  to  move  on,  as  he  ought  to  do  ; 
and  so  I  must.  He  always  ^t•as  an  unconventional 
creature." 

Wetmore  went  away,  but  Beaton  remained,  and 
he  outstayed  several  other  people  who  came  up  to 
speak  to  Miss  Vance.  She  was  interested  in  every- 
body, and  she  liked  the  talk  of  these  clever  literary, 
artistic,  clerical,  even  theatrical  people,  and  she  liked 
the  sort  of  court  with  which  they  recognised  her 
fashion  as  well  as  her  cleverness ;  it  was  very 
pleasant  to  be  treated  intellectually  as  if  she  were 
one  of  themselves,  and  socially  as  if  she  was  not 
habitually  the  same,  but  a  sort  of  guest  in  Bohemia, 
a  distinguished  stranger.  If  it  was  Arcadia  rather 
than  Bohemia,  still  she  felt  her  quality  of  distin- 
guished stranger.  The  flattery  of  it  touched  her 
fancy,  and  not  her  vanity  ;  she  had  very  little  vanity. 
Beaton's  devotion  made  the  same  sort  of  appeal ;  it 
was  not  so  much  that  she  liked  him  as  she  liked 
being  the  object  of  his  admiration.  She  was  a  girl 
of  genuine  sympathies,  intellectual  rather  than 
sentimental.  In  fact  she  was  an  intellectual  person, 
whom  qualities  of  the  heart  saved  from  being  dis- 
agreeable, as  they  saved  her  on  the  other  hand  from 
being  worldly  or  cruel  in  her  fashionableness.  She 
had  read  a  great  many  books,  and  had  ideas  about 
them,  quite  courageous  and  original  ideas ;  she  knew 
about  pictures — she  had  been  in  Wetmore 's  class; 
she  was  fond  of  music;  she  was  willing  to  under- 


328  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

stand  even  politics ;  in  Boston  she  might  have  been 
agnostic, but  in  New  York  she  was  sincerely  religious; 
she  was  very  accomplished,  and  perhaps  it  was  her 
goodness  that  prevented  her  feeling  what  was  not 
best  in  Beaton. 

"  Do  you  think,"  she  said,  after  the  retreat  of  one 
of  the  comers  and  goers  left  her  alone  with  him 
again,  "  that  those  young  ladies  would  like  me  to 
call  on  them  1 " 

"  Those  young  ladies  ? "  Beaton  echoed.  "  Miss 
Leigh  ton  and " 

t{  No ;  I  have  been  there  with  my  aunt's  cards 
already." 

"Oh  yes,"  said  Beaton,  as  if  he  had  known  of  it; 
he  admired  the  pluck  and  pride  with  which  Alma 
had  refrained  from  ever  mentioning  the  fact  to  him, 
and  had  kept  her  mother  from  mentioning  it,  which 
must  have  been  difficult. 

"  I  mean  the  Miss  Dryfooses.  It  seems  really 
barbarous,  if  nobody  goes  near  them.  We  do  all 
kinds  of  things,  and  help  all  kinds  of  people  in  some 
ways,  but  we  let  strangers  remain  strangers  unless 
they  know  how  to  make  their  way  among  us." 

"  The  Dryfooses  certainly  wouldn't  know  how  to 
make  their  way  among  you,"  said  Beaton,  with  a 
sort  of  dreamy  absence  in  his  tone. 

Miss  Vance  went  on,  speaking  out  the  process  of 
reasoning  in  her  mind,  rather  than  any  conclusions 
she  had  reached.  "We  defend  ourselves  by  trying 
to  believe  that  they  must  have  friends  of  their  own, 
or  that  they  would  think  us  patronising,  and 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       329 

wouldn't  like  being  made  the  objects  of  social 
charity  ;  but  they  needn't  really  suppose  anything  of 
the  kind." 

"I  don't  imagine  they  would,"  said  Beaton.  "I 
think  they  'd  be  only  too  happy  to  have  you  come. 
But  you  wouldn't  know  what  to  do  with  each  other, 
indeed,  Miss  Vance." 

"  Perhaps  we  shall  like  each  other,"  said  the  girl 
"bravely,  "  and  then  we  shall  know.  What  church 
are  they  of  ? " 

"  I  don't  believe  they  're  of  any,"  said  Beaton. 
u  The  mother  was  brought  up  a  Dunkard." 

"  A  Dunkard  ? " 

Beaton  told  what  he  knew  of  the  primitive  sect, 
with  its  early  Christian  polity,  its  literal  interpretation 
of  Christ's  ethics,  and  its  quaint  ceremonial  of  foot- 
washing;  he  made  something  picturesque  of  that. 
"The  father  is  a  Mammon-worshipper,  pure  and 
simple.  I  suppose  the  young  ladies  go  to  church, 
but  I  don't  know  where.  They  haven't  tried  to  con- 
vert me." 

"  I  '11  tell  them  not  to  despair — after  I  've  con- 
verted them"  said  Miss  Vance.  "Will  you  let  me 
use  you  as  a  point  d'appui,  Mr.  Beaton  ? " 

"  Any  way  you  like.  If  you  're  really  going  to  see 
them,  perhaps  I  'd  better  make  a  confession.  I  left 
your  banjo  with  them,  after  I  got  it  put  in  order." 

"  How  very  nice  !  Then  we  have  a  common  in- 
terest already." 

"Do  you  mean  the  banjo,  or 1 " 

"  The  banjo,  decidedly.     Which  of  them  plays  1 " 


330  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Neither.  But  the  eldest  heard  that  the  banjo 
was  '  all  the  rage,'  as  the  youngest  says.  Perhaps  you 
can  persuade  them  that  good  works  are  the  rage  too." 

Beaton  had  no  very  lively  belief  that  Margaret 
would  go  to  see  the  Dryfooses ;  he  did  so  few  of  the 
things  he  proposed  that  he  went  upon  the  theory 
that  others  must  be  as  faithless.  Still,  he  had  a  cruel 
amusement  in  figuring  the  possible  encounter  between 
Margaret  Vance,  with  her  intellectual  elegance,  her 
eager  sympathies  and  generous  ideals,  and  those 
girls  with  their  rude  past,  their  false  and  distorted 
perspective,  their  sordid  and  hungry  selfishness,  and 
their  faith  in  the  omnipotence  of  their  father's 
wealth  wounded  by  their  experience  of  its  present 
social  impotence.  At  the  bottom  of  his  heart  he 
sympathised  with  them  rather  than  with  her ;  he 
was  more  like  them. 

People  had  ceased  coming,  and  some  of  them  were 
going.  Miss  Vance  said  she  must  go  too,  and  she 
was  about  to  rise,  when  the  host  came  up  with 
March ;  Beaton  turned  away. 

"  Miss  Vance,  I  want  to  introduce  Mr.  March,  the 
editor  of  Every  Other  Week.  You  oughtn't  to  be 
restricted  to  the  art  department.  We  literary  fellows 
think  that  arm  of  the  service  gets  too  much  of  the 
glory  nowadays."  His  banter  was  for  Beaton,  but 
he  was  already  beyond  ear-shot,  and  the  host  went 
on :  "  Mr.  March  can  talk  with  you  about  your 
favourite  Boston.  He 's  just  turned  his  back  on  it." 

"Oh,  I  hope  not!"  said  Miss  Vance.  "I  can't 
imagine  anybody  voluntarily  leaving  Boston." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       331 

"I  don't  say  he's  so  bad  as  that,"  said  the  host, 
committing  March  to  her.  "  He  came  to  New  York 
because  he  couldn't  help  it — like  the  rest  of  us.  I 
never  know  whether  that's  a  compliment  to  New 
York  or  not." 

They  talked  Boston  a  little  while,  without  finding 
that  they  had  common  acquaintance  there ;  Miss 
Vance  must  have  concluded  that  society  was  much 
larger  in  Boston  than  she  had  supposed  from  her 
visits  there,  or  else  that  March  did  not  know  many 
people  in  it.  But  she  was  not  a  girl  to  care  much 
for  the  inferences  that  might  be  drawn  from  such 
conclusions  ;  she  rather  prided  herself  upon  despising 
them ;  and  she  gave  herself  to  the  pleasure  of  being 
talked  to  as  if  she  were  of  March's  own  age.  In  the 
glow  of  her  sympathetic  beauty  and  elegance  he 
talked  his  best,  and  tried  to  amuse  her  with  his  jokes, 
which  he  had 'the  art  of  tingeing  with  a  little  serious- 
ness on  one  side.  He  made  her  laugh;  and  he  flat- 
tered her  by  making  her  think ;  in  her  turn  she 
charmed  him  so  much  by  enjoying  what  he  said  that 
he  began  to  brag  of  his  wife,  as  a  good  husband 
always  does  when  another  woman  charms  him ;  and 
she  asked,  Oh,  was  Mrs.  March  there ;  and  would  he 
introduce  her  ? 

She  asked  Mrs.  March  for  her  address,  and 
whether  she  had  a  day;  and  she  said  she  would 
come  to  see  her,  if  she  would  let  her.  Mrs.  March 
could  not  be  so  enthusiastic  about  her  as  March 
was,  but  as  they  walked  home  together  they  talked 
the  girl  over,  and  agreed  about  her  beauty  and 


332       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

her  amiability.  Mrs.  March  said  she  seemed  very 
unspoiled  for  a  person  who  must  have  been  so  much 
spoiled.  They  tried  to  analyse  her  charm,  and  they 
succeeded  in  formulating  it  as  a  combination  of 
intellectual  fashionableness  and  worldly  innocence. 
"  I  think,"  said  Mrs.  March,  "  that  city  girls,  brought 
up  as  she  must  have  been,  are  often  the  most 
innocent  of  all.  They  never  imagine  the  wickedness 
of  the  world,  and  if  they  marry  happily  they  go 
through  life  as  innocent  as  children.  Everything 
combines  to  keep  them  so ;  the  very  hollowness  of 
society  shields  them.  They  are  the  loveliest  of  the 
human  race.  But  perhaps  the  rest  have  to  pay  too 
much  for  them." 

"  For  such  an  exquisite  creature  as  Miss  Vance," 
said  March,  "we  couldn't  pay  too  much." 

A  wild  laughing  cry  suddenly  broke  upon  the  air 
at  the  street- crossing  in  front  of  them.  A  girl's 
voice  called  out,  "  Run,  run,  Jen !  The  copper  is 
after  you."  A  woman's  figure  rushed  stumbling 
across  the  way  and  into  the  shadow  of  the  houses, 
pursued  by  a  burly  policeman. 

"  Ah,  but  if  that 's  part  of  the  price  ? " 

They  went  along  fallen  from  the  gay  spirit  of  their 
talk  into  a  silence  which  he  broke  with  a  sigh. 
"  Can  that  poor  wretch  and  the  radiant  girl  we  left 
yonder  really  belong  to  the  same  system  of  things  ? 
How  impossible  each  makes  the  other  seem  ! " 

END  OF  VOL.  I. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES 

VOL.  IL 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

PART  THIRD. 

VI. 

MRS.  HORN  believed  in  the  world  and  in  society 
and  its  unwritten  constitution  devoutly,  and  she 
tolerated  her  niece's  benevolent  activities  as  she  toler- 
ated her  aesthetic  sympathies  because  these  things, 
however  oddly,  were  tolerated — even  encouraged  by 
society;  and  they  gave  Margaret  a  charm.  They 
made  her  originality  interesting.  Mrs.  Horn  did 
not  intend  that  they  should  ever  go  so  far  as  to 
make  her  troublesome ;  and  it  was  with  a  sense  of 
this  abeyant  authority  of  her  aunt's  that  the  girl 
asked  her  approval  of  her  proposed  call  upon  the 
Dryfooses.  She  explained  as  well  as  she  could  the 
social  destitution  of  these  opulent  people,  and  she 
had  of  course  to  name  Beaton  as  the  source  of  her 
knowledge  concerning  them. 

"Did  Mr.  Beaton  suggest  your  calling  on  them  ?" 

"  No ;  he  rather  discouraged  it." 

"  And  why  do  you  think  you  ought  to  go  in  this 
VOL.  II.— 1 


2  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

particular  instance  ?  New  York  is  full  of  people 
who  don't  know  anybody." 

Margaret  laughed.  "  I  suppose  it 's  like  any 
other  charity :  you  reach  the  cases  you  know  of. 
The  others  you  say  you  can't  help,  and  you  try  to 
ignore  them." 

"  It 's  very  romantic,"  said  Mrs.  Horn.  "  I  hope 
you've  counted  the  cost;  all  the  possible  conse- 
quences." 

Margaret  knew  that  her  aunt  had  in  mind  their 
common  experience  with  the  Leightons,  whom,  to 
give  their  common  conscience  peace,  she  had  called 
upon  with  her  aunt's  cards  and  excuses,  and  an 
invitation  for  her  Thursdays,  somewhat  too  late  to 
make  the  visit  seem  a  welcome  to  New  York.  She 
was  so  coldly  received,  not  so  much  for  herself  as  in 
her  quality  of  envoy,  that  her  aunt  experienced  all 
the  comfort  which  vicarious  penance  brings.  She 
did  not  perhaps  consider  sufficiently  her  niece's 
guiltlessness  in  the  expiation.  Margaret  was  not 
with  her  at  St.  Barnaby  in  the  fatal  fortnight  she 
passed  there,  and  never  saw  the  Leightons  till  she 
went  to  call  upon  them.  She  never  complained : 
the  strain  of  asceticism,  which  mysteriously  exists  in 
us  all,  and  makes  us  put  peas,  boiled  or  unboiled,  in 
our  shoes,  gave  her  patience  with  the  snub  which 
the  Leightons  presented  her  for  her  aunt.  But  now 
she  said  with  this  in  mind,  "  Nothing  seems  simpler 
than  to  get  rid  of  people  if  you  don't  want  them. 
You  merely  have  to  let  them  alone." 

'It  isn't  so  pleasant,  letting  them  alone,"  said 
Mrs.  Horn. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  6 

"  Or  having  them  let  you  alone,"  said  Margaret ; 
for  neither  Mrs.  Leighton  nor  Alma  had  ever  come 
to  enjoy  the  belated  hospitality  of  Mrs.  Horn's 
Thursdays. 

"Yes,  or  having  them  let  you  alone,"  Mrs.  Horn 
courageously  consented.  "And  all  that  I  ask  you, 
Margaret,  is  to  be  sure  that  you  really  want  to  know 
these  people." 

"  I  don't,"  said  the  girl  seriously,  "  in  the  usual 
way." 

"Then  the  question  is  whether  you  do  in  the 
unusual  way.  They  will  build  a  great  deal  upon 
you,"  said  Mrs.  Horn,  realising  how  much  the 
Leightons  must  have  built  upon  her,  and  how  much 
out  of  proportion  to  her  desert  they  must  now  dis- 
like her ;  for  she  seemed  to  have  had  them  on  her 
mind  from  the  time  they  came,  and  had  always 
meant  to  recognise  any  reasonable  claim  they  had 
upon  her. 

"  It  seems  very  odd,  very  sad,"  Margaret  returned, 
"  that  you  never  can  act  unselfishly  in  society  affairs. 
If  I  wished  to  go  and  see  those  girls  just  to  do  them 
a  pleasure,  and  perhaps  because  if  they  're  strange 
and  lonely,  I  might  do  them  good,  even — it  would 
be  impossible." 

"  Quite,"  said  her  aunt.  "  Such  a  thing  would  be 
Quixotic.  Society  doesn't  rest  upon  any  such  basis. 
It  can't ;  it  would  go  to  pieces,  if  people  acted  from 
unselfish  motives." 

"  Then  it 's  a  painted  savage ! "  said  the  girl. 
"  All  its  favours  are  really  bargains.  Its  gifts  are 
for  gifts  back  again." 


4  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"Yes,  that  is  true,"  said  Mrs.  Horn,  with  no 
more  sense  of  wrong  in  the  fact  than  the  political 
economist  has  in  the  fact  that  wages  are  the  measure 
of  necessity  and  not  of  merit.  '  You  get  what  you 
pay  for.  It's  a  matter  of  business."  She  satisfied 
herself  with  this  formula,  which  she  did  not  invent, 
as  fully  as  if  it  were  a  reason ;  but  she  did  not  dis- 
like her  niece's  revolt  against  it.  That  was  part  of 
Margaret's  originality,  which  pleased  her  aunt  in  pro- 
portion to  her  own  conventionality ;  she  was  really 
a  timid  person,  and  she  liked  the  show  of  courage 
which  Margaret's  magnanimity  often  reflected  upon 
her.  She  had  through  her  a  repute,  with  people  who 
did  not  know  her  well,  for  intellectual  and  moral 
qualities ;  she  was  supposed  to  be  literary  and  charit- 
able ;  she  almost  had  opinions  and  ideals,  but  really 
fell  short  of  their  possession.  She  thought  that  she 
set  bounds  to  the  girl's  originality  because  she  recog- 
nised them.  Margaret  understood  this  better  than 
her  aunt,  and  knew  that  she  had  consulted  her 
about  going  to  see  the  Dryfooses  out  of  deference, 
and  with  no  expectation  of  luminous  instruction. 
She  was  used  to  being  a  law  to  herself,  but  she  knew 
what  she  might  and  might  not  do,  so  that  she  was 
rather  a  by-law.  She  was  the  kind  of  girl  that  might 
have  fancies  for  artists  and  poets,  but  might  end  by 
marrying  a  prosperous  broker,  and  leavening  a  vast 
lump  of  moneyed  and  fashionable  life  with  her  cul- 
ture, generosity,  and  good-will.  The  intellectual 
interests  were  first  with  her,  but  she  might  be  equal 
to  sacrificing  them ;  she  had  the  best  heart,  but  she 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  5 

might  know  how  to  harden  it ;  if  she  was  eccentric, 
her  social  orbit  was  defined ;  comets  themselves 
traverse  space  on  fixed  lines.  She  was  like  every 
one  else,  a  congei'ies  of  contradictions  and  inconsist- 
encies, but  obedient  to  the  general  expectation  of 
what  a  girl  of  her  position  must  and  must  not  finally 
be.  Provisionally,  she  was  very  much  what  she 
liked  to  be. 

Z 


VII. 

MARGARET  VANCE  tried  to  give  herself  some  reason 
for  going  to  call  upon  the  Dryfooses,  but  she  could 
find  none  better  than  the  wish  to  do  a  kind  thing. 
This  seemed  queerer  and  less  and  less  sufficient  as  she 
examined  it,  and  she  even  admitted  a  little  curiosity 
as  a  harmless  element  in  her  motive,  without  being 
very  well  satisfied  with  it.  She  tried  to  add  a  slight 
sense  of  social  duty,  and  then  she  decided  to  have 
no  motive  at  all,  but  simply  to  pay  her  visit  as  she 
would  to  any  other  eligible  strangers  she  saw  fit  to 
call  upon.  She  perceived  that  she  must  be  very 
careful  not  to  let  them  see  that  any  other  impulse 
had  governed  her ;  she  determined,  if  possible,  to  let 
them  patronise  her ;  to  be  very  modest  and  sincere 
and  diffident,  and,  above  all,  not  to  play  a  part. 
This  was  easy,  compared  with  the  choice  of  a  man- 
ner that  should  convey  to  them  the  fact  that  she 
was  not  playing  a  part.  When  the  hesitating  Irish 
serving-man  had  acknowledged  that  the  ladies  were 
at  home,  and  had  taken  her  card  to  them,  she  sat 
waiting  for  them  in  the  drawing-room.  Her  study 
of  its  appointments,  with  their  impersonal  costliness, 
gave  her  no  suggestion  how  to  proceed;  the  two 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  T 

sisters  were  upon  her  before  she  had  really  decided, 
and  she  rose  to  meet  them  with  the  conviction  that 
she  was  going  to  play  a  part  for  want  of  some  chosen 
means  of  not  doing  so.  She  found  herself,  before 
she  knew  it,  making  her  banjo  a  property  in  the 
little  comedy,  and  professing  so  much  pleasure  in  the 
fact  that  Miss  Dryfoos  was  taking  it  up ;  she  had 
herself  been  so  much  interested  by  it.  Anything, 
she  said,  was  a  relief  from  the  piano ;  and  then, 
between  the  guitar  and  the  banjo,  one  must  really 
choose  the  banjo,  unless  one  wanted  to  devote  one's 
whole  natural  life  to  the  violin.  Of  course,  there 
was  the  mandolin ;  but  Margaret  asked  if  they  did 
not  feel  that  the  bit  of  shell  you  struck  it  with  inter- 
posed a  distance  between  you  and  the  real  soul  of 
the  instrument ;  and  then  it  did  have  such  a  faint, 
mosquitoy  little  tone  !  She  made  much  of  the  ques- 
tion, which  they  left  her  to  debate  alone  while  they 
gazed  solemnly  at  her  till  she  characterised  the  tone 
of  the  mandolin,  when  Mela  broke  into  a  large, 
coarse  laugh. 

"Well,  that's  just  what  it  does  sound  like,"  she 
explained  defiantly  to  her  sister.  "I  always  feel 
like  it  was  going  to  settle  somewhere,  and  I  want  to 
hit  myself  a  slap  before  it  begins  to  bite.  I  don't 
see  what  ever  brought  such  a  thing  into  fashion." 

Margaret  had  not  expected  to  be  so  powerfully 
seconded,  and  she  asked,  after  gathering  herself  to- 
gether, "  And  you  are  both  learning  the  banjo  ? " 

"  My,  no  ! "  said  Mela,  "  I  Ve  gone  through  enough 
with  the  piano.  Christine  is  learning  it." 


8  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  I  'm  so  glad  you  are  making  my  banjo  useful  at 
the  outset,  Miss  Dryfoos."  Both  girls  stared  at  her, 
but  found  it  hard  to  cope  with  the  fact  that  this  was 
the  lady  friend  whose  banjo  Beaton  had  lent  them. 
"Mr.  Beaton  mentioned  that  he  had  left  it  here. 
I  hope  you  '11  keep  it  as  long  as  you  find  it  useful." 

At  this  amiable  speech  even  Christine  could  not 
help  thanking  her.  "  Of  course,"  she  said,  "  I  expect 
to  get  another,  right  off.  Mr.  Beaton  is  going  to 
choose  it  for  me." 

"You  are  very  fortunate.  If  you  haven't  a 
teacher  yet  I  should  so  like  to  recommend  mine." 

Mela  broke  out  in  her  laugh  again.  "  Oh,  I  guess 
Christine's  pretty  well  suited  with  the  one  she's 
got,"  she  said,  with  insinuation.  Her  sister  gave  her 
a  frowning  glance,  and  Margaret  did  not  tempt  her 
to  explain. 

"  Then  that 's  much  better,"  she  said.  "  I  have  a 
kind  of  superstition  in  such  matters  ;  I  don't  like  to 
make  a  second  choice.  In  a  shop  I  like  to  take  the 
first  thing  of  the  kind  I  'm  looking  for,  and  even  if  I 
choose  further  I  come  back  to  the  original." 

"  How  funny  !  "  said  Mela.  "  Well,  now,  I  'm  just 
the  other  way.  I  always  take  the  last  thing,  after 
I  've  picked  over  all  the  rest.  My  luck  always  seems 
to  be  at  the  bottom  of  the  heap.  Now,  Christine, 
she 's  more  like  you.  I  believe  she  could  walk  right 
up  blindfolded  and  put  her  hand  on  the  thing  she 
•wants  every  time." 

"  I  'm  like  father,"  said  Christine,  softened  a  little 
by  the  celebration  of  her  peculiarity.  "  He  says  the 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  9 

reason  so  many  people  don't  get  what  they  want  is 
that  they  don't  want  it  bad  enough.  Now,  when  I 
want  a  thing,  it  seems  to  me  that  I  want  it  all 
through." 

"Well,  that's  just  like  father,  too,"  said  Mela. 
"  That 's  the  way  he  done  when  he  got  that  eighty- 
acre  piece  next  to  Moffitt  that  he  kept  when  he  sold 
the  farm,  and  that 's  got  some  of  the  best  gas  wells  on 
it  now  that  there  is  anywhere."  She  addressed  the 
explanation  to  her  sister,  to  the  exclusion  of  Mar- 
garet, who,  nevertheless,  listened  with  a  smiling  face 
and  a  resolutely  polite  air  of  being  a  party  to  the 
conversation.  Mela  rewarded  her  amiability  by  say- 
ing to  her  finally,  "  You  never  been  in  the  natural- 
gas  country,  have  you  ? " 

"  Oh  no !  And  I  should  so  much  like  to  see 
it ! "  said  Margaret,  with  a  fervour  that  was  partly 
voluntary. 

"  Would  you  1  Well,  we  're  kind  of  sick  of  it,  but 
I  suppose  it  would  strike  a  stranger." 

"/never  got  tired  of  looking  at  the  big  wells  when 
they  lit  them  up,"  said  Christine.  "  It  seems  as  if 
the  world  was  on  fire." 

"  Yes,  and  when  you  see  the  surface-gas  ournun' 
down  in  the  woods,  like  it  used  to  by  our  spring- 
house — so  still,  and  never  spreadun'  any,  just  like  a 
bed  of  some  kind  of  wild-flowers  when  you  ketch 
sight  of  it  a  piece  off." 

They  began  to  tell  of  the  wonders  of  their  strange 
land  in  an  antiphony  of  reminiscences  and  descrip- 
tions ;  they  unconsciously  imputed  a  merit  to  them- 
1* 


10  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

selves  from  the  number  and  violence  of  the  wells  on 
their  father's  property ;  they  bragged  of  the  high 
civilisation  of  Moffitt,  which  they  compared  to  its 
advantage  with  that  of  New  York.  They  became 
excited  by  Margaret's  interest  in  natural  gas,  and 
forgot  to  be  suspicious  and  envious. 

She  said,  as  she  rose,  "Oh,  how  much  I  should 
like  to  see  it  all ! "  Then  she  made  a  little  pause 
and  added,  "  I  'm  so  sorry  my  aunt's  Thursdays  are 
over ;  she  never  has  them  after  Lent,  but  we  're  to 
have  some  people  Tuesday  evening  at  a  little  concert 
which  a  musical  friend  is  going  to  give  with  some 
other  artists.  There  won't  be  any  banjos,  I  'm 
afraid,  but  there  '11  be  some  very  good  singing,  and 
my  aunt  would  be  so  glad  if  you  could  come  with 
your  mother." 

She  put  down  her  aunt's  card  on  the  table  near 
her,  while  Mela  gurgled,  as  if  it  were  the  best  joke, 
"  Oh,  my !  Mother  never  goes  anywhere ;  you 
couldn't  get  her  out  for  love  or  money."  But  she 
was  herself  overwhelmed  with  a  simple  joy  at  Mar- 
garet's politeness,  and  showed  it  in  a  sensuous  way, 
like  a  child,  as  if  she  had  been  tickled.  She  came 
closer  to  Margaret  and  seemed  about  to  fawn  physi- 
cally upon  her. 

"  Ain't  she  just  as  lovely  as  she  can  live  ? " 
she  demanded  of  her  sister  when  Margaret  was 
gone. 

"I  don't  know,"  said  Christine.  "I  guess  she 
wanted  to  know  who  Mr.  Beaton  had  been  lending 
her  banjo  to."  < 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  11 

"  Pshaw !  Do  you  suppose  she 's  in  love  with 
him  1 "  asked  Mela,  and  then  she  broke  into  her 
hoarse  laugh  at  the  look  her  sister  gave  her.  "  Well, 
don't  eat  me,  Christine  !  I  wonder  who  she  is,  any- 
way 1  I'm.  goun'  to  git  it  out  of  Mr.  Beaton  the 
next  time  he  calls.  I  guess  she 's  somebody.  Mrs. 
Mandel  can  tell.  I  wish  that  old  friend  of  hers 
would  hurry  up  and  git  well — or  something.  But  I 
guess  we  appeared  about  as  well  as  she  did.  I  could 
see  she  was  afraid  of  you,  Christine.  I  reckon  it 's 
gittun'  around  a  little  about  father;  and  when  it 
does  I  don't  believe  we  shall  want  for  callers.  Say, 
are  you  goun'  1  To  that  concert  of  theirs  ? " 

"I  don't  know.  Not  till  I  know  who  they  are 
first." 

"  Well,  we  Ve  got  to  hump  ourselves  if  we  're 
goun'  to  find  out  before  Tuesday." 

As  she  went  home  Margaret  felt  wrought  in  her 
that  most  incredible  of  the  miracles,  which,  neverthe- 
less, any  one  may  make  his  experience.  She  felt 
kindly  to  these  girls  because  she  had  tried  to  make 
,  them  happy,  and  she  hoped  that  in  the  interest  she 
had  shown  there  had  been  none  of  the  poison  of 
flattery.  She  was  aware  that  this  was  a  risk  she 
ran  in  such  an  attempt  to  do  good.  If  she  had 
escaped  this  effect  she  was  willing  to  leave  the  rest 
•with  Providence. 


VIII. 

THE  notion  that  a  girl  of  Margaret  Vance's  tradi- 
tions would  naturally  form  of  girls  like  Christine  and 
Mela  Dryfoos  would  be  that  they  were  abashed  in 
the  presence  of  the  new  conditions  of  their  lives,  and 
that  they  must  receive  the  advance  she  had  made 
them  with  a  certain  grateful  humility.  However 
they  received  it,  she  had  made  it  upon  principle, 
from  a  romantic  conception  of  duty ;  but  this  was 
the  way  she  imagined  they  would  receive  it,  because 
she  thought  that  she  would  have  done  so  if  she  had 
been  as  ignorant  and  unbred  as  they.  Her  error  was 
in  arguing  their  attitude  from  her  own  temperament, 
and  endowing  them,  for  the  purposes  of  argument, 
with  her  perspective.  They  had  not  the  means,  intel- 
lectual or  moral,  of  feeling  as  she  fancied.  If  they  had 
remained  at  home  on  the  farm  where  they  were  born, 
Christine  would  have  groAvn  up  that  embodiment  of 
impassioned  suspicion  which  we  find  oftenest  in  the 
narrowest  spheres,  and  Mela  would  always  have  been 
a  good-natured  simpleton ;  but  they  would  never 
have  doubted  their  equality  with  the  wisest  and  the 
finest.  As  it  was,  they  had  not  learned  enough  at 
school  to  doubt  it,  and  the  splendour  of  their  father's 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  13 

success  in  making  money  had  blinded  them  for  ever 
to  any  possible  difference  against  them.  They  had 
no  question  of  themselves  in  the  social  abeyance  to 
which  they  had  been  left  in  New  York.  They  had 
been  surprised,  mystified;  it  was  not  what  they 
had  expected  ;  there  must  be  some  mistake.  They 
were  the  victims  of  an  accident,  which  would  be  re- 
paired as  soon  as  the  fact  of  their  father's  wealth  had 
got  around.  They  had  been  steadfast  in  their  faith, 
through  all  their  disappointment,  that  they  were  not 
only  better  than  most  people  by  virtue  of  his  money, 
but  as  good  as  any ;  and  they  took  Margaret's  visit, 
so  far  as  they  investigated  its  motive,  for  a  sign  that 
at  last  it  was  beginning  to  get  around ;  of  course,  a 
thing  could  not  get  around  in  New  York  so  quick  as 
it  could  in  a  small  place.  They  were  confirmed  in 
their  belief  by  the  sensation  of  Mrs.  Mandel  when 
she  returned  to  duty  that  afternoon,  and  they  con- 
sulted her  about  going  to  Mrs.  Horn's  musicale.  If 
she  had  felt  any  doubt  at  the  name — for  there  were 
Horns  and  Horns — the  address  on  the  card  put  the 
matter  beyond  question ;  and  she  tried  to  make  her 
charges  understand  what  a  precious  chance  had  be- 
fallen them.  She  did  not  succeed ;  they  had  not  the 
premises,  the  experience,  for  a  sufficient  impression ; 
and  she  undid  her  work  in  part  by  the  effort  to 
explain  that  Mrs.  Horn's  standing  was  independent 
of  money ;  that  though  she  was  positively  rich,  she 
was  comparatively  poor.  Christine  inferred  that 
Miss  Vance  had  called  because  she  wished  to  be  the 
first  to  get  in  with  them  since  it  had  begun  to  get 


14  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

around.  This  view  commended  itself  to  Mela  too, 
but  without  warping  her  from  her  opinion  that  Miss 
Vance  was  all  the  same  too  sweet  for  anything.  She 
had  not  so  vivid  a  consciousness  of  her  father's 
money  as  Christine  had;  but  she  reposed  perhaps 
all  the  more  confidently  upon  its  power.  She  was 
far  from  thinking  meanly  of  any  one  who  thought 
highly  of  her  for  it ;  that  seemed  so  natural  a  result 
as  to  be  amiable,  even  admirable;  she  was  willing 
that  any  such  person  should  get  all  the  good  there 
was  in  such  an  attitude  toward  her. 

They  discussed  the  matter  that  night  at  dinner 
before  their  father  and  mother,  who  mostly  sat  silent 
at  their  meals;  the  father  frowning  absently  over 
his  plate,  with  his  head  close  to  it,  and  making  play 
into  his  mouth  with  the  back  of  his  knife  (he  had 
got  so  far  toward  the  use  of  his  fork  as  to  despise 
those  who  still  ate  from  the  edge  of  their  knives), 
and  the  mother  partly  missing  hers  at  times  in  the 
nervous  tremor  that  shook  her  face  from  side  to  side. 

After  a  while  the  subject  of  Mela's  hoarse  babble 
and  of  Christine's  high-pitched,  thin,  sharp  forays  of 
assertion  and  denial  in  the  field  which  her  sister's 
voice  seemed  to  cover,  made  its  way  into  the  old 
man's  consciousness,  and  he  perceived  that  they  were 
talking  with  Mrs.  Mandel  about  it,  and  that  his  wife 
was  from  time  to  time  offering  an  irrelevant  and 
mistaken  comment.  He  agreed  with  Christine,  and 
silently  took  her  view  of  the  affair  some  time  before 
he  made  any  sign  of  having  listened.  There  had 
been  a  time  in  his  life  when  other  things  besides  his 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  15 

money  seemed  admirable  to  him.  He  had  once 
respected  himself  for  the  hard-headed,  practical 
common-sense  which  first  gave  him  standing  among 
his  country  neighbours  ;  which  made  him  supervisor, 
school  trustee,  justice  of  the  peace,  county  commis- 
sioner, secretary  of  the  Moffitt  County  Agricultural 
Society.  In  those  days  he  had  served  the  public 
with  disinterested  zeal  and  proud  ability ;  he  used 
to  write  to  the  Lake  Shore  Farmer  on  agricultural 
topics ;  he  took  part  in  opposing,  through  the 
Moffitt  papers,  the  legislative  waste  of  the  people's 
money ;  on  the  question  of  selling  a  local  canal  to 
the  railroad  company,  which  killed  that  fine  old  State 
work,  and  let  the  dry  ditch  grow  up  to  grass,  he 
might  have  gone  to  the  Legislature,  but  he  contented 
himself  with  defeating  the  Moffitt  member  who  had 
voted  for  the  job.  If  he  opposed  some  measures  for 
the  general  good,  like  high-schools  and  school 
libraries,  it  was  because  he  lacked  perspective,  in  his 
intense  individualism,  and  suspected  all  expense  of 
being  spendthrift.  He  believed  in  good  district 
schools,  and  he  had  a  fondness,  crude  but  genuine, 
for  some  kinds  of  reading — history,  and  forensics  of 
an  elementary  sort. 

With  his  good  head  for  figures  he  doubted  doctors 
and  despised  preachers ;  he  thought  lawyers  were  all 
rascals,  but  he  respected  them  for  their  ability ;  he 
was  not  himself  litigious,  but  he  enjoyed  the  intel- 
lectual encounters  of  a  difficult  lawsuit,  and  he  often 
attended  a  sitting  of  the  fall  term  of  court,  when 
he  went  to  town,  for  the  pleasure  of  hearing  the 


16  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

speeches.  He  was  a  good  citizen,  and  a  good  hus- 
band. As  a  good  father,  he  was  rather  severe  with 
his  children,  and  used  to  whip  them,  especially  the 
gentle  Conrad,  who  somehow  crossed  him  most,  till 
the  twins  died.  After  that  he  never  struck  any  of 
them ;  and  from  the  sight  of  a  blow  dealt  a  horse  he 
turned  as  if  sick.  It  was  a  long  time  before  he 
lifted  himself  up  from  his  sorrow,  and  then  the  will 
of  the  man  seemed  to  have  been  breached  through  his 
affections.  He  let  the  girls  do  as  they  pleased — the 
twins  had  been  girls  ;  he  let  them  go  away  to  school, 
and  got  them  a  piano.  It  was  they  who  made  him 
sell  the  farm.  If  Conrad  had  only  had  their  spirit 
he  could  have  made  him  keep  it,  he  felt;  and  he 
resented  the  want  of  support  he  might  have  found  in 
a  less  yielding  spirit  than  his  son's. 

His  moral  decay  began  with  his  perception  of  the 
opportunity  of  making  money  quickly  and  abun- 
dantly, which  offered  itself  to  him  after  he  sold  hi& 
farm.  He  awoke  to  it  slowly,  from  a  desolation  in 
which  he  tasted  the  last  bitter  of  homesickness,  the 
utter  misery  of  idleness  and  listlessness.  When  he 
broke  down  and  cried  for  the  hard-working,  whole- 
some life  he  had  lost,  he  was  near  the  end  of  this 
season  of  despair,  but  he  was  also  near  the  end  of 
what  was  best  in  himself.  He  devolved  upon  a 
meaner  ideal  than  that  of  conservative  good  citizen- 
ship, which  had  been  his  chief  moral  experience  :  the 
money  he  had  already  made  without  effort  and 
without  merit  bred  its  unholy  self-love  in  him;  he 
began  to  honour  money,  especially  money  that  had 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  17 

"been  Avon  suddenly  and  in  large  sums ;  for  money 
that  had  been  earned,  painfully,  slowly,  and  in  little 
amounts,  he  had  only  pity  and  contempt.  The 
poison  of  that  ambition  to  go  somewhere  and  be 
somebody  which  the  local  speculators  had  instilled 
Into  him  began  to  work  in  the  vanity  which  had 
succeeded  his  somewhat  scornful  self-respect ;  he  re- 
jected Europe  as  the  proper  field  for  his  expansion ; 
lie  rejected  Washington ;  he  preferred  New  York, 
whither  the  men  who  have  made  money  and  do  not 
yet  know  that  money  has  made  them,  all  instinctively 
turn.  He  came  where  he  could  watch  his  money 
"breed  more  money,  and  bring  greater  increase  of  its 
kind  in  an  hour  of  luck  than  the  toil  of  hundreds  of 
men  could  earn  in  a  year.  He  called  it  speculation, 
stocks,  the  street ;  and  his  pride,  his  faith  in  himself, 
mounted  with  his  luck.  He  expected,  when  he  had 
sated  his  greed,  to  begin  to  spend,  and  he  had  formu- 
lated an  intention  to  build  a  great  house,  to  add 
another  to  the  palaces  of  the  country-bred  million- 
aires who  have  come  to  adorn  the  great  city.  In  the 
meantime  he  made  little  account  of  the  things  that 
occupied  his  children,  except  to  fret  at  the  ungrateful 
indifference  of  his  son  to  the  interests  that  could  alone 
make  a  man  of  him.  He  did  not  know  whether  his 
daughters  were  in  society  or  not ;  with  people  coming 
and  going  in  the  house  he  would  have  supposed  they 
must  be  so,  no  matter  who  the  people  were ;  in  some 
vague  way  he  felt  that  he  had  hired  society  in  Mrs. 
Mandel,  at  so  much  a  year.  He  never  met  a  superior 
himself,  except  now  and  then  a  man  of  twenty  or 


18  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

thirty  millions  to  his  one  or  two,  and  then  he  felt 
his  soul  creep  within  him,  without  a  sense  of  social 
inferiority  ;  it  was  a  question  of  financial  inferiority ; 
and  though  Dryfoos's  soul  bowed  itself  and  crawled, 
it  was  with  a  gambler's  admiration  of  wonderful  luck. 
Other  men  said  these  many-millioned  millionaires 
were  smart,  and  got  their  money  by  sharp  practices 
to  which  lesser  men  could  not  attain ;  but  Dryfoos 
believed  that  he  could  compass  the  same  ends,  by  the 
same  means,  with  the  same  chances ;  he  respected 
their  money,  not  them. 

When  he  now  heard  Mrs.  Mandel  and  his  daughters 
talking  of  that  person,  whoever  she  was,  that  Mrs. 
Mandel  seemed  to  think  had  honoured  his  girls  by 
coming  to  see  them,  his  curiosity  was  pricked  as 
much  as  his  pride  was  galled. 

"  Well,  anyway,"  said  Mela,  "  I  don't  care  whether 
Christine's  goun'  or  not ;  /  am.  And  you  got  to  go 
with  me,  Mrs.  Mandel." 

"Well,  there's  a  little  difficulty,"  said  Mrs. 
Mandel,  with  her  unfailing  dignity  and  politeness. 
"  I  haven't  been  asked,  you  know." 

"  Then  what  are  we  goun'  to  do  1  "  demanded 
Mela,  almost  crossly.  She  was  physically  too  amiable, 
she  felt  too  well  corporeally,  ever  to  be  quite  cross. 
"She  might  'a'  knowed — well  known — we  couldn't 
'a'  come  alone,  in  New  York.  I  don't  see  why  we 
couldn't.  I  don't  call  it  much  of  an  invitation." 
•  "  I  suppose  she  thought  you  could  come  with  your 
mother,"  Mrs.  Mandel  suggested. 

"  She  didn't  say  anything  about  mother.    Did  she, 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  19 

Christine  1     Or,  yes,  she  did,  too.     And  I  told  her 
she  couldn't  git  mother  out.    Don't  you  remember?" 

"  I  didn't  pay  much  attention,"  said  Christine.  "I 
wasn't  certain  we  wanted  to  go." 

"  I  reckon  you  wasn't  goun'  to  let  her  see  that  we 
cared  much,"  said  Mela,  half  reproachful,  half  proud 
of  this  attitude  of  Christine.  "  Well,  I  don't  see  but 
what  we  got  to  stay  at  home."  She  laughed  at  this 
lame  conclusion  of  the  matter. 

"  Perhaps  Mr.  Conrad — you  could  very  properly 

take   him  without   an  express  invitation "  Mrs. 

Mandel  began. 

Conrad  looked  up  in  alarm  and  protest.  "I — I 
don't  think  I  could  go  that  evening " 

"What's  the  reason?"  his  father  broke  in  harshly. 
"You  're  not  such  a  sheep  that  you  're  afraid  to  go 
into  company  with  your  sisters  ?  Or  are  you  too 
good  to  go  with  them  ? " 

"  If  it 's  to  be  anything  like  that  night  when  them 
hussies  come  out  and  danced  that  way,"  said  Mrs. 
Dryfoos,  "  I  don't  blame  Coonrod  for  not  wantun*  to 
go.  I  never  saw  the  beat  of  it." 

Mela  sent  a  yelling  laugh  across  the  table  to  her 
mother.  "Well,  I  wish  Miss  Vance  could  V  heard 
that !  Why,  mother,  did  you  think  it  was  like  the 
ballet  ? " 

"  Well,  I  didn't  know,  Mely,  child,"  said  the  old 
woman.     "  I  didn't  know  what  it  was  like.     I  hain't 
never  been  to  one,  and  you  can't  be  too  keerf ul  where  • 
you  go,  in  a  place  like  New  York" 

"  What 's  the  reason  you  can't    go  ?  "    Dryfoos 


20  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

ignored  the  passage  between  his  wife  and  daughter  in 
making  this  demand  of  his  son,  with  a  sour  face. 

"  I  have  an  engagement  that  night — it 's  one  of 
our  meetings " 

"  I  reckon  you  can  let  your  meeting  go  for  one 
night,"  said  Dryf oos.  "  It  can't  be  so  important  as 
all  that,  that  you  must  disappoint  your  sisters." 

"I  don't  like  to  disappoint  those  poor  creatures. 
They  depend  so  much  upon  the  meetings " 

"  I  reckon  they  can  stand  it  for  one  night,"  said 
the  old  man.  He  added,  "  The  poor  ye  have  with 
you  always." 

"  That 's  so,  Coonrod,"  said  his  mother.  "It 's  the 
Saviour's  own  words." 

"  Yes,  mother.  But  they  're  not  meant  just  as 
father  used  them." 

"  How  do  you  know  how  they  were  meant  1  Or 
how  I  used  them  ?  "  cried  the  father.  "  Now  you 
just  make  your  plans  to  go  with  the  girls,  Tuesday 
night.  They  can't  go  alone,  and  Mrs.  Mandel  can't 
go  with  them." 

"  Pshaw ! "  said  Mela.  "  We  don't  want  to  take 
Conrad  away  from  his  meetun',  do  we,  Chris  1 " 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Christine,  in  her  high,  fine 
voice.  "  They  could  get  along  without  him  for  one 
night,  as  father  says." 

"  Well,  I  'm  not  agoun'  to  take  him,"  said  Mela, 
"  Now,  Mrs.  Mandel,  just  think  out  some  other  way. 
Say !  What 's  the  reason  we  couldn't  get  somebody 
else  to  take  us  just  as  well  ?  Ain't  that  rulable  ?" 

"  It  would  be  allowable " 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  21 

"  Allowable,  I  mean"  Mela  corrected  herself. 

"But  it  might  look  a  little  significant,  unless  it 
was  some  old  family  friend." 

"  Well,  let 's  get  Mr.  Fulkerson  to  take  us.  He 's 
the  oldest  family  friend  we  got." 

"  I  won't  go  with  Mr.  Fulkerson,"  said  Christine 
serenely. 

"  Why,  I  'm  sure,  Christine,"  her  mother  pleaded, 
"  Mr.  Fulkerson  is  a  very  good  young  man,  and  very 
nice  appearun'." 

Mela  shouted,  "  He 's  ten  times  as  pleasant  as  that 
old  Mr.  Beaton  of  Christine's  ! " 

Christine  made  no  effort  to  break  the  constraint 
that  fell  upon  the  table  at  this  sally,  but  her  father 
said,  "  Christine  is  right,  Mela.  It  wouldn't  do  for 
you  to  go  with  any  other  young  man.  Conrad  will 
go  with  you." 

"  I  'm  not  certain  I  want  to  go,  yet,"  said  Chris- 
tine. 

"  Well,  settle  that  among  yourselves.  But  if  you 
want  to  go,  your  brother  will  go  with  you." 

"  Of  course,  Coonrod  '11  go,  if  his  sisters  wants 
him  to,"  the  old  woman  pleaded.  "  I  reckon  it  ain't 
agoun'  to  be  anything  very  bad ;  and  if  it  is,  Coon- 
rod,  why  you  can  just  git  right  up  and  come  out." 

"  It  will  be  all  right,  mother.  And  I  will  go,  of 
course." 

"There,  now,  I  knowed  you  would,  Coonrod. 
Now,  fawther ! "  This  appeal  was  to  make  the  old 
man  say  something  in  recognition  of  Conrad's  sacri- 
fice. 

2A 


22  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  You  '11  always  find,"  he  said,  "  that  it 's  those  of 
your  own  household  that  have  the  first  claim  on 
you." 

"  That 's  so,  Coonrod",  urged  his  mother.  "  It 's 
Bible  truth.  Your  fawther  ain't  a  perfesser,  but  he 
always  read  his  Bible.  Search  the  Scriptures. 
That 's  what  it  means." 

"  Laws !"  cried  Mely,  "  a  body  can  see,  easy 
enough  from  mother,  where  Conrad's  wantun'  to  be 
a  preacher  comes  from.  I  should  V  thought  she  'd 
'a'  wanted  to  been  one  herself." 

"  Let  your  women  keep  silence  in  the  churches," 
said  the  old  woman  solemnly. 

"  There  you  go  again,  mother !  I  guess  if  you 
was  to  say  that  to  some  of  the  lady  ministers  nowa- 
days, you  'd  git  yourself  into  trouble."  Mela  looked 
round  for  approval,  and  gurgled  out  a  hoarse  laugh. 


IX. 


THE  Dryfooses  went  late  to  Mrs.  Horn's  musicale 
in  spite  of  Mrs.  Mandel's  advice.  Christine  made 
the  delay,  both  because  she  wished  to  show  Miss 
Vance  that  she  was  not  anxious,  and  because  she 
had  some  vague  notion  of  the  distinction  of  arriving 
late  at  any  sort  of  entertainment.  Mrs.  Mandel 
insisted  upon  the  difference  between  this  musicale 
and  an  ordinary  reception ;  but  Christine  rather 
fancied  disturbing  a  company  that  had  got  seated, 
and  perhaps  making  people  rise  and  stand,  while 
she  found  her  way  to  her  place,  as  she  had  seen 
them  do  for  a  tardy  comer  at  the  theatre. 

Mela,  whom  she  did  not  admit  to  her  reasons  or 
feelings  always,  followed  her  with  the  servile 
admiration  she  had  for  all  that  Christine  did ;  and 
she  took  on  trust  as  somehow  successful  the  result 
of  Christine's  obstinacy,  when  they  were  allowed 
to  stand  against  the  wall  at  the  back  of  the  room 
through  the  whole  of  the  long  piece  begun  just 
before  they  came  in.  There  had  been  no  one  to 
receive  them ;  a  few  people,  in  the  rear  rows  of 
chairs  near  them,  turned  their  heads  to  glance  at 
them,  and  then  looked  away  again.  Mela  had  her 


24  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

misgivings ;  but  at  the  end  of  the  piece  Miss  Vance 
came  up  to  them  at  once,  and  then  Mela  knew  that 
she  had  her  eyes  on  them  all  the  time,  and  that 
Christine  must  have  been  right.  Christine  said 
nothing  about  their  coming  late,  and  so  Mela  did 
not  make  any  excuse,  and  Miss  Vance  seemed  to 
expect  none.  She  glanced  with  a  sort  of  surprise  at 
Conrad,  when  Christine  introduced  him;  Mela  did 
not  know  whether  she  liked  their  bringing  him,  till 
she  shook  hands  with  him,  and  said,  "  Oh,  I  am 
very  glad  indeed !  Mr.  Dryfoos  and  I  have  met) 
before."  Without  explaining  where  or  when,  she 
led  them  to  her  aunt  and  presented  them,  and  then 
said,  "I'm  going  to  put  you  with  some  friends  of 
yours,"  and  quickly  seated  them  next  the  Marches. 
Mela  liked  that  well  enough;  she  thought  she 
might  have  some  joking  with  Mr.  March,  for  all  his 
wife  was  so  stiff;  but  the  look  which  Christine 
wore  seemed  to  forbid,  provisionally  at  least,  any 
such  recreation.  On  her  part,  Christine  was  cool 
with  the  Marches.  It  went  through  her  mind  that 
they  must  have  told  Miss  Vance  they  knew  her; 
and  perhaps  they  had  boasted  of  her  intimacy. 
She  relaxed  a  little  toward  them  when  she  saw 
Beaton  leaning  against  the  wall  at  the  end  of  the 
row  next  Mrs.  March.  Then  she  conjectured  that 
he  might  have  told  Miss  Vance  of  her  acquaintance 
with  the  Marches,  and  she  bent  forward  and  nodded 
to  Mrs.  March  across  Conrad,  Mela,  and  Mr.  March. 
She  conceived  of  him  as  a  sort  of  hand  of  her 
father's,  but  she  was  willing  to  take  them  at  their 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  25 

apparent  social  valuation  for  the  time.  She  leaned 
back  in  her  chair,  and  did  not  look  up  at  Beaton 
after  the  first  furtive  glance,  though  she  felt  his 
eyes  on  her. 

The  music  began  again  almost  at  once,  before 
Mela  had  time  to  make  Conrad  tell  her  where  Miss 
Vance  had  met  him  before.  She  would  not  have 
minded  interrupting  the  music ;  but  every  one  else 
seemed  so  attentive,  even  Christine  that  she  had 
not  the  courage. 

The  concert  went  on  to  an  end  without  realising 
for.  her  the  ideal  of  pleasure  which  one  ought  to 
find  in  society.  She  was  not  exacting,  but  it  seemed 
to  her  there  were  very  few  young  men,  and  when 
the  music  was  over,  and  their  opportunity  came  to 
be  sociable,  they  were  not  very  sociable.  They 
were  not  introduced,  for  one  thing ;  but  it  appeared 
to  Mela  that  they  might  have  got  introduced,  if 
they  had  any  sense ;  she  saw  them  looking  at  her, 
and  she  was  glad  she  had  dressed  so  much ;  she  was 
dressed  more  than  any  other  lady  there,  and  either 
because  she  was  the  most  dressed  of  any  person 
there,  or  because  it  had  got  around  who  her  father 
was,  she  felt  that  she  had  made  an  impression  on  the 
young  men.  In  her  satisfaction  with  this,  and  from 
her  good  nature,  she  was  contented  to  be  served 
with  her  refreshments  after  the  concert  by  Mr. 
March,  and  to  remain  joking  with  him.  She  was  at 
her  ease ;  she  let  her  hoarse  voice  out  in  her  largest 
laugh ;  she  accused  him,  to  the  admiration  of  those 
near,  of  getting  her  into  a  perfect  gale.  It  appeared 
VOL.  II.— 2 


26  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

to  her,  in  her  own  pleasure,  her  mission  to  illustrate 
to  the  rather  subdued  people  about  her  what  a  good 
time  really  was,  so  that  they  could  have  it  if  they 
wanted  it.  Her  joy  was  crowned  when  March 
modestly  professed  himself  unworthy  to  monopolise 
her,  and  explained  how  selfish  he  felt  in  talking  to  a 
young  lady  when  there  were  so  many  young  men 
dying  to  do  so. 

"  Oh,  pshaw  dyun',  yes  ! "  cried  Mela,  tasting  the 
irony.  "  I  guess  I  see  them  ! " 

He  asked  if  he  might  really  introduce  a  friend 
of  his  to  her,  and  she  said,  Well,  yes,  if  he  thought 
he  could  live  to  get  to  her ;  and  March  brought  up 
a  man  whom  he  thought  very  young  and  Mela 
thought  very  old.  He  was  a  contributor  to  Every 
Other  Week,  and  so  March  knew  him ;  he  believed 
himself  a  student  of  human  nature  in  behalf  of 
literature,  and  he  now  set  about  studying  Mela. 
He  tempted  her  to  express  her  opinion  on  all  points, 
and  he  laughed  so  amiably  at  the  boldness  and 
humorous  vigour  of  her  ideas  that  she  was  delighted 
with  him.  She  asked  him  if  he  was  a  New-Yorker 
by  birth ;  and  she  told  him  she  pitied  him,  when  he 
said  he  had  never  been  West.  She  professed  her- 
self perfectly  sick  of  New  York,  and  urged  him  to 
go  to  Moffitt  if  he  wanted  to  see  a  real  live  town. 
He  wondered  if  it  would  do  to  put  her  into  literature 
just  as  she  was,  with  all  her  slang  and  brag,  but  he 
decided  that  he  would  have  to  subdue  her  a  great 
deal :  he  did  not  see  how  he  could  reconcile  the  facts 
of  her  conversation  with  the  facts  of  her  appearance  : 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  27 

her  beauty,  her  splendour  of  dress,  her  apparent 
right  to  be  where  she  was.  These  things  perplexed 
him;  he  was  afraid  the  great  American  novel,  if 
true,  must  be  incredible.  Mela  said  he  ought  to 
hear  her  sister  go  on  about  New  York  when  they 
first  came ;  but  she  reckoned  that  Christine  was 
getting  so  she  could  put  up  with  it  a  little  better, 
now.  She  looked  significantly  across  the  room  to 
the  place  where  Christine  was  now  talking  with 
Beaton ;  and  the  student  of  human  nature  asked, 
Was  she  here  ?  and,  Would  she  introduce  him  ? 
Mela  said  she  would,  the  first  chance  she  got ;  and 
she  added,  They  would  be  much  pleased  to  have 
him  call.  She  felt  herself  to  be  having  a  beautiful 
time,  and  she  got  directly  upon  such  intimate  terms 
with  the  student  of  human  nature  that  she  laughed 
with  him  about  some  peculiarities  of  his,  such  as  his 
going  so  far  about  to  ask  things  he  wanted  to  know 
from  her ;  she  said  she  never  did  believe  in  beating 
about  the  bush  much.  She  had  noticed  the  same 
thing  in  Miss  Vance  when  she  came  to  call  that 
day ;  and  when  the  young  man  owned  that  he  came 
rather  a  good  deal  to  Mrs.  Horn's  house,  she  asked 
him,  Well,  what  sort  of  a  girl  was  Miss  Vance,  any- 
way, and  where  did  he  suppose  she  had  met  her 
brother  ?  The  student  of  human  nature  could  not 
say  as  to  this,  and  as  to  Miss  Vance  he  judged  it 
safest  to  treat  of  the  non-society  side  of  her  char- 
acter, her  activity  in  charity,  her  special  devotion  to 
the  work  among  the  poor  on  the  East  Side,  which 
she  personally  engaged  in. 


28  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Oh,  that 's  where  Conrad  goes,  too  ! "  Mela  inter- 
rupted. "I'll  bet  anything  that's  where  she  met 
him.  I  wisht  I  could  tell  Christine  !  But  I  suppose 
she  would  want  to  kill  me,  if  I  was  to  speak  to  her 
now" 

The  student  of  human  nature  said  politely,  "  Oh, 
shall  I  take  you  to  her  ? " 

Mela  answered,  "  I  guess  you  better  not ! "  with 
a  laugh  so  significant  that  he  could  not  help  his 
inferences  concerning  both  Christine's  absorption  in 
the  person  she  was  talking  with,  and  the  habitual 
violence  of  her  temper.  He  made  note  of  how  Mela 
helplessly  spoke  of  all  her  family  by  their  names,  as 
if  he  were  already  intimate  with  them ;  he  fancied 
that  if  he  could  get  that  in  skilfully,  it  would  be  a 
valuable  colour  in  his  study ;  the  English  lord  whom 
she  should  astonish  with  it,  began  to  form  himself 
out  of  the  dramatic  nebulosity  in  his  mind,  and  to 
whirl  on  a  definite  orbit  in  American  society.  But 
he  was  puzzled  to  decide  whether  Mela's  willingness 
to  take  him  into  her  confidence  on  short  notice  was 
typical  or  personal :  the  trait  of  a  daughter  of  the 
natural-gas  millionaire,  or  a  foible  of  her  own. 

Beaton  talked  with  Christine  the  greater  part  of 
the  evening  that  was  left  after  the  concert.  He  was 
very  grave,  and  took  the  tone  of  a  fatherly  friend  ; 
he  spoke  guardedly  of  the  people  present,  and  mode- 
rated the  severity  of  some  of  Christine's  judgments 
of  their  looks  and  costumes.  He  did  this  out  of 
a  sort  of  unreasoned  allegiance  to  Margaret,  whom 
he  was  in  the  mood  of  wishing  to  please  by  being 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  29 

very  kind  and  good,  as  she  always  was.  He  had 
the  sense  also  of  atoning  by  this  behaviour  for  some 
reckless  things  he  had  said  before  that  to  Christine ; 
he  put  on  a  sad,  reproving  air  with  her,  and  gave 
her  the  feeling  of  being  held  in  check. 

She  chafed  at  it,  and  said,  glancing  at  Margaret 
in  talk  with  her  brother,  "  I  don't  think  Miss  Vance 
is  so  very  pretty,  do  you  ? " 

"  I  never  think  whether  she 's  pretty  or  not," 
said  Beaton,  with  dreamy  affectation.  "  She  is 
merely  perfect.  Does  she  know  your  brother  ? " 

"  So  she  says.  I  didn't  suppose  Conrad  ever  went 
anywhere,  except  to  tenement-houses." 

"It  might  have  been  there,"  Beaton  suggested. 
"  She  goes  among  friendless  people  everywhere." 

"May  be  that's  the  reason  she  came  to  see  us  I" 
said  Christine. 

Beaton  looked  at  her  with  his  smouldering  eyes, 
and  felt  the  wish  to  say,  "  Yes,  it  was  exactly  that," 
but  he  only  allowed  himself  to  deny  the  possibility 
of  any  such  motive  in  that  case.  He  added,  "  I  am 
so  glad  you  know  her,  Miss  Dryfoos.  I  never  met 
Miss  Vance  without  feeling  myself  better  and  truer, 
somehow ;  or  the  wish  to  be  so." 

"And  you  think  we  might  be  improved  too?" 
Christine  retorted.  "Well,  I  must  say  you're  not 
very  flattering,  Mr.  Beaton,  anyway." 

Beaton  would  have  liked  to  answer  her  ac- 
cording to  her  cattishness,  with  a  good  clawing 
sarcasm  that  would  leave  its  smart  in  her  pride ; 
but  he  was  being  good,  and  he  could  not  change  all 


30  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

at  once.  Besides,  the  girl's  attitude  under  the 
social  honour  done  her  interested  him.  He  was  sure 
she  had  never  been  in  such  good  company  before, 
but  he  could  see  that  she  was  not  in  the  least 
affected  by  the  experience.  He  had  told  her  who 
this  person  and  that  was;  and  he  saw  she  had 
understood  that  the  names  were  of  consequence; 
but  she  seemed  to  feel  her  equality  with  them  all. 
Her  serenity  was  not  obviously  akin  to  the  savage 
stoicism  in  which  Beaton  hid  his  own  consciousness 
of  social  inferiority ;  but  having  won  his  way  in  the 
world  so  far  by  his  talent,  his  personal  quality,  he 
did  not  conceive  the  simple  fact  in  her  case. 
Christine  was  self-possessed  because  she  felt  that  a 
knowledge  of  her  father's  fortune  had  got  around, 
and  she  had  the  peace  which  money  gives  to 
ignorance ;  but  Beaton  attributed  her  poise  to 
indifference  to  social  values.  This,  while  he  in- 
wardly sneered  at  it,  .avenged  him  upon  his  own 
too  keen  sense  of  them,  and,  together  with  his 
temporary  allegiance  to  Margaret's  goodness,  kept 
him  from  retaliating  Christine's  vulgarity.  He  said, 
"I  don't  see  how  that  could  be,"  and  left  the 
question  of  flattery  to  settle  itself. 

The  people  began  to  go  away,  following  each  other 
up  to  take  leave  of  Mrs.  Horn.  Christine  watched 
them  with  unconcern,  and  either  because  she  would 
not  be  governed  by  the  general  movement,  or  be- 
cause she  liked  being  with  Beaton,  gave  no  sign 
of  going.  Mela  was  still  talking  to  the  student  of 
human  nature,  sending  out  her  laugh  in  deep  gurgles 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  31 

amidst  the  unimaginable  confidences  she  was  making 
him  about  herself,  her  family,  the  staff  of  Every 
Other  Week,  Mrs.  Mandel,  and  the  kind  of  life  they 
had  all  led  before  she  came  to  them.  He  was  not  a 
blind  devotee  of  art  for  art's  sake,  and  though  he 
felt  that  if  one  could  portray  Mela  just  as  she  was 
she  would  be  the  richest  possible  material,  he  was 
rather  ashamed  to  know  some  of  the  things  she  told 
him ;  and  he  kept  looking  anxiously  about  for  a 
chance  of  escape.  The  company  had  reduced  itself  to 
the  Dryfoos  groups  and  some  friends  of  Mrs.  Horn's 
who  had  the  right  to  linger,  when  Margaret  crossed 
the  room  with  Conrad  to  Christine  and  Beaton. 

"  I  'm  so  glad,  Miss  Dryfoos,  to  find  that  I  was  not 
quite  a  stranger  to  you  all  when  I  ventured  to  call, 
the  other  day.  Your  brother  and  I  are  rather  old  ac- 
quaintances, though  I  never  knew  who  he  was  before. 
I  don't  know  just  how  to  say  we  met  where  he  is 
valued  so  much.  I  suppose  I  mustn't  try  to  say  how 
much,"  she  added  with  a  look  of  deep  regard  at  him. 

Conrad  blushed  and  stood  folding  his  arms  tight 
over  his  breast,  while  his  sister  received  Margaret's 
confession  with  the  suspicion  which  was  her  first 
feeling  in  regard  to  any  new  thing.  What  she 
concluded  was  that  this  girl  was  trying  to  get  in 
with  them,  for  reasons  of  her  own.  She  said : 
"  Yes ;  it 's  the  first  /  ever  heard  of  his  knowing 
you.  He 's  so  much  taken  up  with  his  meetings,  he 
didn't  want  to  come  to-night." 

Margaret  drew  in  her  lip  before  she  answered, 
without  apparent  resentment  of  the  awkwardness  or 


32  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

ungraciousness,  whichever  she  found  it,  "  I  don't 
wonder !  You  become  so  absorbed  in  such  work 
that  you  think  nothing  else  is  worth  while.  But 
I  'm  glad  Mr.  Dryfoos  could  come  with  you  ;  I  'm  so 
glad  you  could  all  come ;  I  knew  you  would  enjoy 
the  music.  Do  sit  down — 

"  No,"  said  Christine  bluntly ;  "  we  must  be  going. 
Mela  ! "  she  called  out,  "  come  ! " 

The  last  group  about  Mrs.  Horn  looked  round, 
but  Christine  advanced  upon  them  undismayed,  and 
took  the  hand  Mrs.  Horn  promptly  gave  her.  "  Well, 
I  must  bid  you  good  night." 

"  Oh,  good  night,"  murmured  the  elder  lady.  "  So 
very  kind  of  you  to  come." 

"  I  Ve  had  the  best  kind  of  a  time,"  said  Mela 
cordially.  "  I  hain't  laughed  so  much,  I  don't  know 
when." 

"  Oh,  I  'm  glad  you  enjoyed  it,"  said  Mrs.  Horn 
in  the  same  polite  murmur  she  had  used  with 
Christine ;  but  she  said  nothing  to  either  sister 
about  any  future  meeting. 

They  were  apparently  not  troubled.  Mela  said 
over  her  shoulder  to  the  student  of  human  nature, 
"  The  next  time  I  see  you  I  '11  give  it  to  you  for 
what  you  said  about  Moffitt." 

Margaret  made  some  entreating  paces  after  them, 
but  she  did  not  succeed  in  covering  the  retreat  of 
the  sisters  against  critical  conjecture.  She  could 
only  say  to  Conrad,  as  if  recurring  to  the  subject,  "  I 
hope  we  can  get  our  friends  to  play  for  us  some  night. 
I  know  it  isn't  any  real  help,  but  such  things  take 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  33 

the  poor  creatures  out  of  themselves  for  the  time 
being,  don't  you  think  ?  " 

"  Oh  yes,"  he  answered.  "  They  're  good  in  that 
way."  He  turned  back  hesitatingly  to  Mrs.  Horn, 
and  said,  with  a  blush,  "  I  thank  you  for  a  happy 
evening." 

"  Oh,  I  am  very  glad,"  she  replied  in  her  murmur. 

One  of  the  old  friends  of  the  house  arched  her 
eyebrows  in  saying  good  night,  and  offered  the  two 
young  men  remaining  seats  home  in  her  carriage. 
Beaton  gloomily  refused,  and  she  kept  herself  from 
asking  the  student  of  human  nature,  till  she  had  got 
him  into  her  carriage,  "What  is  Moffitt,  and  what 
did  you  say  about  it  1 " 

"Now  you  see,  Margaret,"  said  Mrs.  Horn,  with 
bated  triumph,  when  the  people  were  all  gone. 

"Yes,  I  see,"  the  girl  consented.  "From  one 
point  of  view,  of  course  it 's  been  a  failure.  I  don't 
think  we've  given  Miss  Dryfoos  a  pleasure,  but 
perhaps  nobody  could.  And  at  least  we've  given 
her  the  opportunity  of  enjoying  herself." 

"Such  people,"  said  Mrs  Horn  philosophically, 
"people  with  their  money  must  of  course  be  re- 
ceived sooner  or  later.  You  can't  keep  them  out. 
Only,  I  believe  I  would  rather  let  some  one  else 
begin  with  them.  The  Leightons  didn't  come  1 " 

"  I  sent  them  cards.     I  couldn't  call  again." 

Mrs.  Horn  sighed  a  little.  "I  suppose  Mr. 
Dryfoos  is  one  of  your  fellow-philanthropists  ? " 

"He's  one  of  the  workers,"  said  Margaret  "I 
2* 


34  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

met  him  several  times  at  the  Hall,  but  I  only  knew 
his  first  name.  I  think  he 's  a  great  friend  of  Father 
Benedict;  he  seems  devoted  to  the  work.  Don't 
you  think  he  looks  good  ? " 

"  Very,"  said  Mrs.  Horn,  with  a  colour  of  censure 
in  her  assent.  "The  younger  girl  seemed  more 
amiable  than  her  sister.  But  what  manners  ! " 

"  Dreadful ! "  said  Margaret,  with  knit  brows,  and 
a  pursed  mouth  of  humorous  suffering.  "But  she 
appeared  to  feel  very  much  at  home." 

"Oh,  as  to  that,  neither  of  them  was  much 
abashed.  Do  you  suppose  Mr.  Beaton  gave  the 
other  one  some  hints  for  that  quaint  dress  of  hers  ? 
I  don't  imagine  that  black  and  lace  is  her  own 
invention.  She  seems  to  have  some  sort  of  strange 
fascination  for  him." 

"She's  very  picturesque,"  Margaret  explained. 
"And  artists  see  points  in  people  that  the  rest  of 
us  don't." 

"  Could  it  be  her  money  ? "  Mrs.  Horn  insinuated. 
"  He  must  be  very  poor. " 

"But  he  isn't  base,"  retorted  the  girl  with  a 
generous  indignation  that  made  her  aunt  smile. 

"  Oh  no ;  but  if  he  fancies  her  so  picturesque,  it 
doesn't  follow  that  he  would  object  to  her  being  rich." 

"  It  would  with  a  man  like  Mr.  Beaton  ! " 

"  You  are  an  idealist,  Margaret.  I  suppose  your 
Mr.  March  has  some  disinterested  motive  in  paying 
court  to  Miss  Mela — Pamela,  I  suppose,  is  her  name. 
He  talked  to  her  longer  than  her  literature  would 
have  lasted." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  35 

"He  seems  a  very  kind  person,"  said  Margaret. 

"  And  Mr.  Dryfoos  pays  his  salary  ? " 

"I  don't  know  anything  about  that.  But  that 
wouldn't  make  any  difference  with  him." 

Mrs.  Horn  laughed  out  at  this  security ;  but  she 
was  not  displeased  by  the  nobleness  which  it  came 
from.  She  liked  Margaret  to  be  high-minded,  and 
was  really  not  distressed  by  any  good  that  was  in 
her. 

The  Marches  walked  home,  both  because  it  was 
not  far,  and  because  they  must  spare  in  carriage  hire 
at  any  rate.  As  soon  as  they  were  out  of  the  house, 
she  applied  a  point  of  conscience  to  him. 

"I  don't  see  how  you  could  talk  to  that  girl  so 
long,  Basil,  and  make  her  laugh  so." 

"  Why,  there  seemed  no  one  else  to  do  it,  till  I 
thought  of  Kendricks." 

"  Yes,  but  I  kept  thinking,  Now  he 's  pleasant  to 
her  because  he  thinks  it's  to  his  interest.  If  she 
had  no  relation  to  Every  Other  Week,  he  wouldn't 
waste  his  time  on  her." 

"  Isabel,"  March  complained,  "  I  wish  you  wouldn't 
think  of  me  in  he,  him,  and  his  :  I  never  personalise 
you  in  my  thoughts  :  you  remain  always  a  vague 
unindividualised  essence,  not  quite  without  form  and 
void,  but  nounless  and  pronounless.  I  call  that  a 
much  more  beautiful  mental  attitude  toward  the 
object  of  one's  affections.  But  if  you  must  he  and 
him  and  his  me  in  your  thoughts,  I  wish  you  'd  have 
more  kindly  thoughts  of  me." 


36  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Do  you  deny  that  it 's  true,  Basil  ? " 

"  Do  you  believe  that  it 's  true,  Isabel  1 " 

"'  No  matter.    But  could  you  excuse  it  if  it  were  ? " 

*'  Ah,  I  see  you  'd  have  been  capable  of  it  in  my 
place,  and  you're  ashamed." 

"  Yes,"  sighed  the  wife,  "  I  'm  afraid  that  I  should. 
But  tell  me  that  you  wouldn't,  Basil  ! " 

"  I  can  tell  you  that  I  wasn't.  But  I  suppose  that 
in  a  real  exigency,  I  could  truckle  to  the  proprietary 
Dryfooses  as  well  as  you." 

"  Oh  no  ;  you  mustn't,  dear !  I  'm  a  woman,  and 
I  'm  dreadfully  afraid.  But  you  must  always  be  a 
man,  especially  with  that  horrid  old  Mr.  Dryfoos. 
Promise  me  that  you  '11  never  yield  the  least  point 
to  him  in  a  matter  of  right  and  wrong !  " 

"  Not,  if  he 's  right  and  I  'm  wrong  1 " 

"  Don't  trifle,  dear !  You  know  what  I  mean. 
Will  you  promise  ? " 

"  I  '11  promise  to  submit  the  point  to  you,  and  let 
you  do  the  yielding.  As  for  me,  I  shall  be  adamant. 
Nothing  I  like  better." 

"They're  dreadful,  even  that  poor,  good  young 
fellow,  who's  so  different  from  all  the  rest;  he's 
awful,  too,  because  you  feel  that  he 's  a  martyr  to 
them." 

"And  I  never  did  like  martyrs  a  great  deal," 
March  interposed. 

"I  wonder  how  they  came  to  be  there,"  Mrs. 
March  pursued,  unmindful  of  his  joke. 

"That  is  exactly  what  seemed  to  be  puzzling 
Miss  Mela  about  us.  She  asked,  and  I  explained 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  37 

as  well  as  I  could;  and  then  she  told  me  that 
Miss  Vance  had  corne  to  call  on  them  and  invited 
them;  and  first  they  didn't  know  how  they  could 
come  till  they  thought  of  making  Conrad  bring 
them.  But  she  didn't  say  why  Miss  Vance  called 
on  them.  Mr.  Dryfoos  doesn't  employ  her  on  Every 
Other  Week.  But  I  suppose  she  has  her  own  vile 
little  motive." 

"  It  can't  he  their  money ;  it  can't  be  ! "  sighed 
Mrs.  March. 

"Well,  I  don't  know.     We  all  respect  money." 

"  Yes,  but  Miss  Vance's  position  is  so  secure.  She 
needn't  pay  court  to  those  stupid,  vulgar  people." 

"  Well,  let 's  console  ourselves  with  the  belief  that 
she  would,  if  she  needed.  Such  people  as  the 
Dryfooses  are  the  raw  material  of  good  society.  It 
made  up  of  refined  or  meritorious  people — 
professors  and  litterateurs,  ministers  and  musicians, 
and  their  families.  All  the  fashionable  people  there 
to-night  were  like  the  Dryfooses  a  generation  or 
two  ago.  I  dare  say  the  material  works  up  faster 
now,  and  in  a  season  or  two  you  won't  know  the 
Dryfooses  from  the  other  plutocrats.  They  will — 
a  little  better  than  they  do  now;  they'll  see  a 
difference,  but  nothing  radical,  nothing  painful. 
People  who  get  up  in  the  world  by  service  to  others 
— through  letters,  or  art,  or  science — may  have 
their  modest  little  misgivings  as  to  their  social  value, 
but  people  that  rise  by  money — especially  if  their 
gains  are  sudden — never  have.  And  that 's  the  kind 
of  people  that  form  our  nobility ;  there 's  no  use 
2B 


38  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

pretending  that  we  haven't  a  nobility;  we  might 
as  well  pretend  we  haven't  first-class  cars  in  the 
presence  of  a  vestibuled  Pullman.  Those  girls  had 
no  more  doubt  of  their  right  to  be  there  than  if 
they  had  been  duchesses :  we  thought  it  was  very 
nice  of  Miss  Vance  to  come  and  ask  us,  but  they 
didn't ;  they  weren't  afraid,  or  the  least  embarrassed ; 
they  were  perfectly  natural — like  born  aristocrats. 
And  you  may  be  sure  that  if  the  plutocracy  that 
now  owns  the  country  ever  sees  fit  to  take  on 
the  outward  signs  of  an  aristocracy — titles,  and 
arms,  and  ancestors — it  won't  falter  from  any 
inherent  question  of  its  worth.  Money  prizes  and 
honours  itself,  and  if  there  is  anything  it  hasn't  got, 
it  believes  it  can  buy  it." 

"  Well,  Basil,"  said  his  wife,  "  I  hope  you  won't 
get  infected  with  Lindau's  ideas  of  rich  people. 
Some  of  them  are  very  good  and  kind." 

"  Who  denies  that  ?  Not  even  Lindau  himself. 
It's  all  right.  And  the  great  thing  is  that  the 
evening's  enjoyment  is  over.  I  've  got  my  society 
smile  off,  and  I  'm  radiantly  happy.  Go  on  with 
your  little  pessimistic  diatribes,  Isabel;  you  can't 
spoil  my  pleasure." 

"  I  could  see,"  said  Mela,  as  she  and  Christine 
drove  home  together,  "that  she  was  as  jealous  as 
she  could  be,  all  the  time  you  was  talkun'  to  Mr. 
Beaton.  She  pretended  to  be  talkun'  to  Conrad, 
but  she  kep'  her  eye  on  you  pretty  close,  I  can  tell 
you.  I  bet  she  just  got  us  there  to  see  how  him 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  39 

and  you  would  act  together.  And  I  reckon  she 
was  satisfied.  He 's  dead  gone  on  you,  Chris." 

Christine  listened  with  a  dreamy  pleasure  to  the 
flatteries  with  which  Mela  plied  her  in  the  hope  of 
some  return  in  kind,  and  not  at  all  because  she  felt 
spitefully  toward  Miss  Vance,  or  in  anywise  wished 
her  ill.  "  Who  was  that  fellow  with  you  so  long  ? " 
asked  Christine.  "I  suppose  you  turned  yourself 
inside  out  to  him,  like  you  always  do." 

Mela  was  transported  by  the  cruel  ingratitude. 
"  It 's  a  lie  !  I  didn't  tell  him  a  single  thing." 

Conrad  walked  home,  choosing  to  do  so  because 
he  did  not  wish  to  hear  his  sisters'  talk  of  the  even- 
ing, and  because  there  was  a  tumult  in  his  spirit 
which  he  wished  to  let  have  its  way.  In  his  life 
with  its  single  purpose,  defeated  by  stronger  wills 
than  his  own,  and  now  struggling  partially  to  fulfil 
itself  in  acts  of  devotion  to  others,  the  thought  of 
women  had  entered  scarcely  more  than  in  that  of 
a  child.  His  ideals  were  of  a  virginal  vagueness ; 
faces,  voices,  gestures  had  filled  his  fancy  at  times, 
but  almost  passionlessly ;  and  the  sensation  that  he 
now  indulged  was  a  kind  of  worship,  ardent,  but 
reverent  and  exalted.  The  brutal  experiences  of  the 
world  make  us  forget  that  there  are  such  natures  in 
it,  and  that  they  seem  to  come  up  out  of  the  lowly 
earth  as  well  as  down  from  the  high  heaven.  In  the 
heart  of  this  man  well  on  toward  thirty  there  had 
never  been  left  the  stain  of  a  base  thought ;  not  that, 
suggestion  and  conjecture  had  not  visited  him,  but 


40  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

that  he  had  not  entertained  them,  or  in  anywise 
made  them  his.  In  a  Catholic  age  and  country,  he 
would  have  been  one  of  those  monks  who  are 
sainted  after  death  for  the  angelic  purity  of  their 
lives,  and  whose  names  are  invoked  by  believers 
in  moments  of  trial,  like  San  Luigi  Gonzaga.  As 
he  now  walked  along  thinking,  with  a  lover's  beati- 
fied smile  on  his  face,  of  how  Margaret  Vance  had 
spoken  and  looked,  he  dramatised  scenes  in  which 
he  approved  himself  to  her  by  acts  of  goodness  and 
unselfishness,  and  died  to  please  her  for  the  sake  of 
others.  He  made  her  praise  him  for  them,  to  his 
face,  when  he  disclaimed  their  merit,  and  after  his 
death,  when  he  could  not.  All  the  time  he  was 
poignantly  sensible  of  her  grace,  her  elegance,  her 
style ;  they  seemed  to  intoxicate  him ;  some  tones 
of  her  voice  thrilled  through  his  nerves,  and  some 
looks  turned  his  brain  with  a  delicious,  swooning 
sense  of  her  beauty ;  her  refinement  bewildered  him. 
But  all  this  did  not  admit  the  idea  of  possession, 
even  of  aspiration.  At  the  most  his  worship  only 
set  her  beyond  the  love  of  other  men  as  far  as 
beyond  his  own. 


PAET  FOURTH. 

I. 

NOT  long  after  Lent,  Fulkerson  set  before  Dry- 
foos  one  day  his  scheme  for  a  dinner  in  celebration 
of  the  success  of  Every  Other  Week.  Dryfoos  had 
never  meddled  in  any  manner  with  the  conduct  of 
the  periodical;  but  Fulkerson  easily  saw  that  he 
was  proud  of  his  relation  to  it,  and  he  proceeded 
upon  the  theory  that  he  would  be  willing  to  have 
this  relation  known.  On  the  days  when  he  had 
been  lucky  in  stocks,  he  was  apt  to  drop  in  at  the 
office  on  Eleventh  Street,  on  his  way  uptown,  and 
listen  to  Fulkerson's  talk.  He  was  on  good  enough 
terms  with  March,  who  revised  his  first  impressions 
of  the  man,  but  they  had  not  much  to  say  to  each 
other,  and  it  seemed  to  March  that  Dryfoos  was 
even  a  little  afraid  of  him,  as  of  a  piece  of  mechanism 
he  had  acquired,  but  did  not  quite  understand ;  he 
left  the  working  of  it  to  Fulkerson,  who  no  doubt 
bragged  of  it  sufficiently.  The  old  man  seemed  to 
have  as  little  to  say  to  his  son  ;  he  shut  himself  up 
with  Fulkerson,  where  the  others  could  hear  the  man- 


42  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

ager  begin  and  go  on  with  an  unstinted  flow  of  talk 
about  Every  Other  Week ;  for  Fulkerson  never  talked 
of  anything  else  if  he  could  help  it,  and  was  always 
bringing  the  conversation  back  to  it  if  it  strayed. 

The  day  he  spoke  of  the  dinner  he  rose  and  called 
from  his  door,  "March,  I  say,  come  down  here  a 
minute,  will  you?  Conrad,  I  want  you,  too." 

The  editor  and  the  publisher  found  the  manager 
and  the  proprietor  seated  on  opposite  sides  of  the 
table.  "  It 's  about  those  funeral  baked  meats,  you 
know,"  Fulkerson  explained,  "  and  I  was  trying  to 
give  Mr.  Dryfoos  some  idea  of  what  we  wanted  to 
do.  That  is,  what  I  wanted  to  do,"  he  continued, 
turning  from  March  to  Dryfoos.  "  March,  here,  is 
opposed  to  it,  of  course.  He  'd  like  to  publish  Every 
Other  Week  on  the  sly;  keep  it  out  of  the  papers, 
and  off  the  news-stands ;  he 's  a  modest  Boston 
petunia,  and  he  shrinks  from  publicity ;  but  I  am 
not  that  kind  of  herb  myself,  and  I  want  all  the 
publicity  we  can  get — beg,  borrow,  or  steal — for 
this  thing.  I  say  that  you  can't  work  the  sacred 
rites  of  hospitality  in  a  better  cause,  and  what  I 
propose  is  a  little  dinner  for  the  purpose  of  recognis- 
ing the  hit  we  've  made  with  this  thing.  My  idea 
was  to  strike  you  for  the  necessary  funds,  and  do 
the  thing  on  a  handsome  scale.  The  term  little 
dinner  is  a  mere  figure  of  speech.  A  little  dinner 
wouldn't  make  a  big  talk,  and  what  we  want  is  the 
big  talk,  at  present,  if  we  don't  lay  up  a  cent.  My 
notion  was  that  pretty  soon  after  Lent,  now,  when 
everybody  is  feeling  just  right,  we  should  begin  to 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  43 

send  out  our  paragraphs,  affirmative,  negative,  and 
explanatory,  and  along  about  the  first  of  May  we 
should  sit  down  about  a  hundred  strong,  the  most 
distinguished  people  in  the  country,  and  solemnise 
our  triumph.  There  it  is  in  a  nutshell.  I  might 
expand  and  I  might  expound,  but  that's  the  sum 
and  substance  of  it." 

Fulkerson  stopped,  and  ran  his  eyes  eagerly  over 
the  faces  of  his  three  listeners,  one  after  the  other. 
March  was  a  little  surprised  when  Dryfoos  turned 
to  him,  but  that  reference  of  the  question  seemed  to 
give  Fulkerson  particular  pleasure  :  "  What  do  you 
think,  Mr.  March  1 " 

The  editor  leaned  back  in  his  chair.  "I  don't 
pretend  to  have  Mr.  Fulkerson's  genius  for  advertis- 
ing ;  but  it  seems  to  me  a  little  early  yet.  .  We 
might  celebrate  later  when  we  've  got  more  to  cele- 
brate. At  present  we  're  a  pleasing  novelty,  rather 
than  a  fixed  fact." 

"  Ah,  you  don't  get  the  idea  ! "  said  Fulkerson. 
"  What  we  want  to  do  with  this  dinner  is  to  fix  the 
fact." 

"  Am  I  going  to  come  in  anywhere  ? "  the  old 
man  interrupted. 

"  You  're  going  to  come  in  at  the  head  of  the  pro- 
cession !  We  are  going  to  strike  everything  that  is 
imaginative  and  romantic  in  the  newspaper  soul 
with  you  and  your  history  and  your  fancy  for  going 
in  for  this  thing.  I  can  start  you  in  a  paragraph 
that  will  travel  through  all  the  newspapers,  from 
Maine  to  Texas  and  from  Alaska  to  Florida.  We 


44  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

have  had  all  sorts  of  rich  men  backing  up  literary 
enterprises,  but  the  natural-gas  man  in  literature  is 
a  new  thing,  and  the  combination  of  your  pic- 
turesque past  and  your  aesthetic  present  is  some- 
thing that  will  knock  out  the  sympathies  of  the 
American  public  the  first  round.  I  feel,"  said 
Fulkerson,  with  a  tremor  of  pathos  in  his  voice, 
"  that  Every  Other  Week  is  at  a  disadvantage  before 
the  public  as  long  as  it 's  supposed  to  be  my  enter- 
prise, my  idea.  As  far  as  I  'm  known  at  all,  I  'm 
known  simply  as  a  syndicate  man,  and  nobody  in 
the  press  believes  that  I  Ve  got  the  money  to  run 
the  thing  on  a  grand  scale;  a  suspicion  of  insolvency 
must  attach  to  it  sooner  or  later,  and  the  fellows  on 
the  press  will  work  up  that  impression,  sooner  or 
later,  if  we  don't  give  them  something  else  to  work 
up.  Now,  as  soon  as  I  begin  to  give  it  away  to  the 
correspondents  that  you're  in  it,  with  your  untold 
millions — that  in  fact  it  was  your  idea  from  the 
start,  that  you  originated  it  to  give  full  play  to 
the  humanitarian  tendencies  of  Conrad  here,  Avho  's 
always  had  these  theories  of  co-operation,  and 
longed  to  realise  them  for  the  benefit  of  our  strug- 
gling young  Avriters  and  artists " 

March  had  listened  with  growing  amusement  to 
the  mingled  burlesque  and  earnest  of  Fulkerson's 
self-sacrificing  impudence,  and  with  wonder  as  to 
how  far  Dryfoos  was  consenting  to  his  preposterous 
proposition,  when  Conrad  broke  out,  "Mr.  Fulker- 
son, I  could  not  allow  you  to  do  that.  It  would  not 
be  true ;  I  did  not  wish  to  be  here ;  and — and  what  I 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  45 

think — what  I  wish  to  do — that  is  something  I  will 
not  let  any  one  put  me  in  a  false  position  about. 
No  ! "  The  blood  rushed  into  the  young  man's 
gentle  face,  and  he  met  his  father's  glance  with 
'defiance. 

Dryfoos  turned  from  him  to  Fulkerson  without 
speaking,  and  Fulkerson  said  caressingly,  "Why, 
of  course,  Coonrod  !  I  know  how  you  feel,  and  I 
shouldn't  let  anything  of  that  sort  go  out  uncontra- 
dicted  afterwards.  But  there  isn't  anything  in  these 
times  that  would  give  us  better  standing  with  the 
public  than  some  hint  of  the  way  you  feel  about 
such  things.  The  public  expects  to  be  interested, 
and  nothing  would  interest  it  more  than  to  be  told 
that  the  success  of  Every  Other  Week  sprang  from  the 
first  application  of  the  principle  of  Live  and  let  Live 
to  a  literary  enterprise.  It  would  look  particularly 
well,  coming  from  you  and  your  father,  but  if  you 
object,  Ave  can  leave  that  part  out ;  though  if  you 
approve  of  the  principle  I  don't  see  why  you  need 
object.  The  main  thing  is  to  let  the  public  know 
that  it  owes  this  thing  to  the  liberal  and  enlightened 
spirit  of  one  of  the  foremost  capitalists  of  the  country, 
and  that  his  purposes  are  not  likely  to  be  betrayed 
in  the  hands  of  his  son.  I  should  get  a  little  cut 
made  from  a  photograph  of  your  father,  and  supply 
it  gratis  with  the  paragraphs." 

"I  guess,"  said  the  old  man,  "we  will  get  along 
without  the  cut." 

Fulkerson  laughed.  "  Well,  well !  Have  it  your 
own  way.  But  the  sight  of  your  face  in  the  patent 


46  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

outsides  of  the  country  press,  would  be  worth  half  a 
dozen  subscribers  in  every  school  district  through- 
out the  length  and  breadth  of  this  fair  land." 

"  There  was  a  fellow,"  Dryfoos  explained  in  an 
aside  to  March,  "that  was  getting  up  a  history  of 
MofFett,  and  he  asked  me  to  let  him  put  a  steel 
engraving  of  me  in.  He  said  a  good  many  promi- 
nent citizens  were  going  to  have  theirs  in,  and  his 
price  was  a  hundred  and  fifty  dollars.  I  told  him  I 
couldn't  let  mine  go  for  less  than  two  hundred,  and 
when  he  said  he  could  give  me  a  splendid  plate  for 
that  money,  I  said  I  should  want  it  cash.  You 
never  saw  a  fellow  more  astonished  when  he  got  it 
through  him  that  I  expected  him  to  pay  the  two 
hundred." 

Fulkerson  laughed  in  keen  appreciation  of  the 
joke.  "  Well,  sir,  I  guess  Every  Other  IPeek  will  pay 
you  that  much.  But  if  you  won't  sell  at  any  price, 
all  right ;  we  must  try  to  worry  along  without  the 
light  of  your  countenance  on  the  posters,  but  we  got 
to  have  it  for  the  banquet." 

"  I  don't  seem  to  feel  very  hungry,  yet,"  said  the 
old  man  drily. 

"  Oh,  I'appetit  vient  en  mangeant,  as  our  French 
friends  say.  You'll  be  hungry  enough  when  you 
see  the  preliminary  Little  Neck  clam.  It 's  too  late 
for  oysters." 

"  Doesn't  that  fact  seem  to  point  to  a  postpone- 
ment till  they  get  back,  sometime  in  October," 
March  suggested. 

"  No,  no  ! "  said  Fulkerson,  "  you  don't  catch  on 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES,  47 

to  the  business  end  of  this  thing,  my  friends.  You  're 
proceeding  on  something  like  the  old  exploded  idea 
that  the  demand  creates  the  supply,  when  every- 
body knows,  if  he 's  watched  the  course  of  modern 
events,  that  it 's  just  as  apt  to  be  the  other  way.  I 
contend  that  we  Ve  got  a  real  substantial  success  to 
celebrate  now ;  but  even  if  we  hadn't,  the  celebra- 
tion would  do  more  than  anything  else  to  create  the 
success,  if  we  got  it  properly  before  the  public. 
People  will  say,  Those  fellows  are  not  fools ;  they 
wouldn't  go  and  rejoice  over  their  magazine  unless 
they  had  got  a  big  thing  in  it.  And  the  state  of 
feeling  we.  should  produce  in  the  public  mind  would 
make  a  boom  of  perfectly  unprecedented  grandeur 
for  E.  0.  W.  Heigh  ?  " 

He  looked  sunnily  from  one  to  the  other  in  suc- 
cession. The  elder  Dryfoos  said,  with  his  chin  on 
the  top  of  his  stick,  "I  reckon  those  Little  Neck 
clams  will  keep." 

"Well,  just  as  -you  say,"  Fulkerson  cheerfully 
assented.  "  I  understand  you  to  agree  to  the 
general  principle  of  a  little  dinner  ? " 

"  The  smaller  the  better,"  said  the  old  man. 

"Well,  I  say  a  little  dinner  because  the  idea  of 
that  seems  to  cover  the  case,  even  if  we  vary  the 
plan  a  little.  I  had  thought  of  a  reception,  may  be, 
that  would  include  the  lady  contributors  and  artists, 
and  the  Avives  and  daughters  of  the  other  contribu- 
tors. That  would  give  us  the  chance  to  ring  in  a 
lot  of  society  correspondents  and  get  the  thing 
written  up  in  first-class  shape.  By  the  way ! "  cried 


48  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

Fulkerson,  slapping  himself  on  the  leg,  "why  not 
have  the  dinner  and  the  reception  both  ? " 

"  I  don't  understand,"  said  Dryfoos. 

"  Why,  have  a  select  little  dinner  for  ten  or 
twenty  choice  spirits  of  the  male  persuasion,  and 
then  about  ten  o'clock,  throw  open  your  palatial 
drawing-rooms  and  admit  the  females  to  champagne, 
salads,  and  ices.  It  is  the  very  thing  !  Come  ! " 

"  What  do  you  think  of  it,  Mr.  March  ? "  asked 
Dryfoos,  on  whose  social  inexperience  Fulkerson's 
words  projected  no  very  intelligible  image,  and  who 
perhaps  hoped  for  some  more  light. 

"It's  a  beautiful  vision,"  said  March,  "and  if  it 
will  take  more  time  to  realise  it  I  think  I  approve. 
I  approve  of  anything  that  will  delay  Mr.  Fulker- 
son's advertising  orgie." 

"  Then,"  Fulkerson  pursued,  "  we  could  have  the 
pleasure  of  Miss  Christine  and  Miss  Mela's  company ; 
and  may  be  Mrs.  Dryfoos  would  look  in  on  us  in 
the  course  of  the  evening.  There's  no  hurry,  as 
Mr.  March  suggests,  if  we  can  give  the  thing  this 
shape.  I  will  cheerfully  adopt  the  idea  of  my 
honourable  colleague." 

March  laughed  at  his  impudence,  but  at  heart  he 
was  ashamed  of  Fulkerson  for  proposing  to  make 
use  of  Dryfoos  and  his  house  in  that  way.  He 
fancied  something  appealing  in  the  look  that  the 
old  man  turned  on  him,  and  something  indignant 
in  Conrad's  flush ;  but  probably  this  was  only  his 
fancy.  He  reflected  that  neither  of  them  coiild  feel 
it  as  people  of  more  worldly  knowledge  would,  and 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  49 

he  consoled  himself  with  the  fact  that  Fulkerson 
was  really  not  such  a  charlatan  as  he  seemed.  But 
it  went  through  his  mind  that  this  was  a  strange 
end  for  all  Dryfoos's  money -making  to  come  to ;  and 
he  philosophically  accepted  the  fact  of  his  own 
humble  fortunes  when  he  reflected  how  little  his 
money  could  buy  for  such  a  man.  It  was  an 
"honourable  use  that  Fulkerson  was  putting  it  to  in 
Every  Other  Week ;  it  might  be  far  more  creditably 
spent  on  such  an  enterprise  than  on  horses,  or  wines, 
or  women,  the  usual  resources  of  the  brute  rich  ;  and 
if  it  were  to  be  lost,  it  might  better  be  lost  that  way 
than  in  stocks.  He  kept  a  smiling  face  turned  to 
Dryfoos  while  these  irreverent  considerations  occu- 
pied him,  and  hardened  his  heart  against  father  and 
son  and  their  possible  emotions. 

The  old  man  rose  to  put  an  end  to  the  interview. 
He  only  repeated,  "  I  guess  those  clams  will  keep 
till  fall." 

But  Fulkerson  was  apparently  satisfied  with  the 
progress  he  had  made ;  and  when  he  joined  March 
for  the  stroll  homeward  after  office  hours,  he  was 
able  to  detach  his  mind  from  the  subject,  as  if 
content  to  leave  it. 

"  This  is  about  the  best  part  of  the  year  in  New 
York,"  he  said.  In  some  of  the  areas  the  grass  had 
sprouted,  and  the  tender  young  foliage  had  loosened 
itself  from  the  buds  on  a  sidewalk  tree  here  and 
there ;  the  soft  air  was  full  of  spring,  and  the  deli- 
cate sky,  far  aloof,  had  the  look  it  never  wears  at 
any  other  season.  "  It  ain't  a  time  of  year  to*  com- 
VOL.  II.— 3 


50  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

plain  much  of,  anywhere;  but  I  don't  want  any- 
thing better  than  the  month  of  May  in  New  York. 
Farther  South  it 's  too  hot,  and  I  've  been  in  Boston 
in  May  when  that  east  wind  of  yours  made  every 
nerve  in  my  body  get  up  and  howl.  I  reckon  the 
weather  has  a  good  deal  to  do  with  the  local 
temperament.  The  reason  a  New  York  man  takes 
life  so  easily  with  all  his  rush  is  that  his  climate 
don't  worry  him.  But  a  Boston  man  must  be 
rasped  the  whole  while  by  the  edge  in  his.  air. 
That  accounts  for  his  sharpness ;  and  when  he 's 
lived  through  twenty-five  or  thirty  Boston  Mays, 
he  gets  to  thinking  that  Providence  has  some  par- 
ticular use  for  him,  or  he  wouldn't  have  survived, 
and  that  makes  him  conceited.  See  ? " 

"  I  see,"  said  March.  "  But  I  don't  know  how 
you're  going  to  work  that  idea  into  an  advertise- 
ment, exactly." 

"  Oh,  pshaw,  now,  March  !  You  don't  think  I  've 
got  that  on  the  brain  all  the  time  1 " 

"  You  were  gradually  leading  up  to  Every  Other 
Week,  somehow." 

"  No,  sir ;  I  wasn't.  I  was  just  thinking  what  a 
different  creature  a  Massachusetts  man  was  from  a 
Virginian.  And  yet  I  suppose  they  're  both  as  pure 
English  stock  as  you'll  get  anywhere  in  America. 
March,  I  think  Colonel  Woodburn's  paper  is  going 
to  make  a  hit." 

"  You  've  got  there  !  When  it  knocks  down  the 
sale  about  one-half,  I  shall  know  it 's  made  a  hit." 

"I'm  not  afraid,"  said  Fulkerson.     "That  thing 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  51 

is  going  to  attract  attention.  It's  well  written — 
you  can  take  the  pomposity  out  of  it,  here  and  there 
• — and  it 's  novel.  Our  people  like  a  bold  strike,  and 
it 's  going  to  shake  them  up  tremendously  to  have 
serfdom  advocated  on  high  moral  grounds  as  the 
only  solution  of  the  labour  problem.  You  see  in 
the  first  place  he  goes  for  their  sympathies  by  the 
way  he  portrays  the  actual  relations  of  capital  and 
labour ;  he  shows  how  things  have  got  to  go  from 
bad  to  worse,  and  then  he  trots  out  his  little  old 
hobby,  and  proves  that  if  slavery  had  not  been 
interfered  with,  it  would  have  perfected  itself  in  the 
interest  of  humanity.  He  makes  a  pretty  strong 
plea  for  it." 

March  threw  back  his  head  and  laughed.  "  He 's 
converted  you !  I  swear,  Fulkerson,  if  we  had 
accepted  and  paid  for  an  article  advocating  canni- 
balism as  the  only  resource  for  getting  rid  of  the 
superfluous  poor,  you  'd  begin  to  believe  in  it." 

Fulkerson  smiled  in  approval  of  the  joke,  and 
only  said,  "I  wish  you  could  meet  the  colonel  in  the 
privacy  of  the  domestic  circle,  March.  You  'd  like 
him.  He 's  a  splendid  old  fellow ;  regular  type. 
Talk  about  spring  !  You  ought  to  see  the  widow's 
little  back  yard  these  days.  You  know  that  glass 
gallery  just  beyond  the  dining-room  1  Those  girls 
have  got  the  pot-plants  out  of  that,  and  a  lot  more, 
and  they've  turned  the  edges  of  that  back  yard, 
along  the  fence,  into  a  regular  bower ;  they  Ve  got 
sweet  peas  planted,  and  nasturtiums,  and  we  shall 
be  in  a  blaze  of  glory  about  the  beginning  of  June. 


52  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

Fun  to  see  'em  work  in  the  garden,  and  the  bird 
bossing  the  job  in  his  cage  under  the  cherry-tree. 
Have  to  keep  the  middle  of  the  yard  for  the  clothes- 
line, but  six  days  in  the  week  it's  a  lawn,  and  I 
go  over  it  with  a  mower  myself.  March,  there  ain't 
anything  like  a  home,  is  there  1  Dear  little  cot  of 
your  own,  heigh  ?  I  tell  you,  March,  when  I  get  to 
pushing  that  mower  round,  and  the  colonel  is  smok- 
ing his  cigar  in  the  gallery,  and  those  girls  are 
pottering  over  the  flowers,  one  of  these  soft  evenings 
after  dinner,  I  feel  like  a  human  being.  Yes,  I  do. 
I  struck  it  rich  when  I  concluded  to  take  my  meals 
.at  the  widow's.  For  eight  dollars  a  week  I  get  good 
board,  refined  society,  and  all  the  advantages  of  a 
Christian  home.  By  the  way,  you've  never  had 
much  talk  with  Miss  Woodburn,  have  you,  March  ? " 

"  Not  so  much  as  with  Miss  Woodburn's  father." 

"Well,  he  is  rather  apt  to  scoop  the  conversation. 
I  must  draw  his  fire,  sometime,  when  you  and 
Mrs.  March  are  around,  and  get  you  a  chance  with 
Miss  "\Voodburn." 

"  I  should  like  that  better,  I  believe,"  said  March. 

"  Well,  I  shouldn't  wonder  if  you  did.  Curious, 
but  Miss  Woodburn  isn't  at  all  your  idea  of  a 
Southern  girl.  She 's  got  lots  of  go ;  she 's  never 
idle  a  minute ;  she  keeps  the  old  gentleman  in  first- 
class  shape,  and  she  don't  believe  a  bit  in  the  slavery 
solution  of  the  labour  problem ;  says  she 's  glad  it 's 
gone,  and  if  it 's  anything  like  the  effects  of  it,  she 's 
glad  it  went  before  her  time.  No,  sir,  she 's  as  full 
of  snap  as  the  liveliest  kind  of  a  Northern  girl 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  53 

None  of  that  sunny  Southern  languor  you  read 
about." 

"I  suppose  the  typical  Southerner,  like  the 
typical  anything  else,  is  pretty  difficult  to  find,"  said 
March.  "  But  perhaps  Miss  Woodburn  represents 
the  new  South.  The  modern  conditions  must  be 
producing  a  modern  type." 

"  Well,  that 's  what  she  and  the  colonel  both  say. 
They  say  there  ain't  anything  left  of  that  Walter 
Scott  dignity  and  chivalry  in  the  rising  generation ; 
takes  too  much  time.  You  ought  to  see  her  sketch 
the  old-school,  high-and-mighty  manners,  as  they  sur- 
vive among  some  of  the  antiques  in  Charlottesburg. 
If  that  thing  could  be  put  upon  the  stage  it  would 
be  a  killing  success.  Makes  the  old  gentleman  laugh 
in  spite  of  himself.  But  he 's  as  proud  of  her  as 
Punch,  anyway.  Why  don't  you  and  Mrs.  March 
come  round  oftener  ?  Look  here  !  How  would  it 
do  to  have  a  little  excursion,  somewhere,  after  the 
spring  fairly  gets  in  its  work  ? " 

"Reporters  present  ? " 

"  No,  no  !  Nothing  of  that  kind ;  perfectly  sin- 
cere and  disinterested  enjoyment." 

"  Oh,  a  few  handbills  to  be  scattered  around : 
'Buy  Every  Other  Week,1  'Look  out  for  the  next 
number  of  Every  Oilier  Week,'  'Every  Other  Week  at 
all  the  news-stands.'  Well,  I  '11  talk  it  over  with 
Mrs.  March.  I  suppose  there 's  no  great  hurry." 

March  told  his  wife  of  the  idyllic  mood  in  which 
he  had  left  Fulkerson  at  the  widow's  door,  and  sha 

said  he  must  be  in  love. 

2C 


54  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  "Why,  of  course  !  I  wonder  I  didn't  think  of  that. 
But  Fulkerson  is  such  an  impartial  admirer  of  the 
whole  sex  that  you  can't  think  of  his  liking  one 
more  than  another.  I  don't  know  that  he  showed 
any  unjust  partiality,  though,  in  his  talk  of  'those 
girls,'  as  he  called  them.  And  I  always  rather 
fancied  that  Mrs.  Mandel — he's  done  so  much  for 
her,  you  know  ;  and  she  is  such  a  well-balanced,  well- 
preserved  person,  and  so  lady-like  and  correct : 

"Fulkerson  had  the  word  for  her:  academic. 
She 's  everything  that  instruction  and  discipline  can 
make  of  a  woman ;  but  I  shouldn't  think  they  could 
make  enough  of  her  to  be  in  love  with." 

"Well,  I  don't  know.  The  academic  has  its 
charm.  There  are  moods  in  which  I  could  imagine 
myself  in  love  with  an  academic  person.  That 
regularity  of  line ;  that  reasoned  strictness  of 
contour ;  that  neatness  of  pose ;  that  slightly  con- 
ventional but  harmonious  grouping  of  the  emotions 
and  morals — you  can  see  how  it  would  have  its 
charm,  the  Wedgwood  in  human  nature  1  I  wonder 
where  Mrs.  Mandel  keeps  her  urn  and  her  willow." 

"  I  should  think  she  might  have  use  for  them  in 
that  family,  poor  thing ! "  said  Mrs.  March. 

"  Ah,  that  reminds  me,"  said  her  husband,  "  that 
we  had  another  talk  with  the  old  gentleman,  this 
afternoon,  about  Fulkerson's  literary,  artistic,  and 
advertising  orgie,  and  it 's  postponed  till  October." 

"  The  later  the  better,  I  should  think,"  said  Mrs. 
March,  who  did  not  really  think  about  it  at  all,  but 
whom  the  date  fixed  for  it  caused  to  think  of  the 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  55 

intervening  time.  "  We  have  got  to  consider  what 
we  will  do  about  the  summer,  before  long,  Basil." 

"  Oh,  not  yet,  not  yet,"  he  pleaded,  with  that 
man's  willingness  to  abide  in  the  present,  which  is 
so  trying  to  a  woman.  "  It 's  only  the  end  of  April." 

"  It  will  be  the  end  of  June  before  we  know. 
And  these  people  wanting  the  Boston  house  another 
year  complicates  it.  We  can't  spend  the  summer 
there,  as  Ave  planned." 

"  They  oughtn't  to  have  offered  us  an  increased 
rent ;  they  have  taken  an  advantage  of  us. " 

"  I  don't  know  that  it  matters,"  said  Mrs.  March. 
"  I  had  decided  not  to  go  there." 

"  Had  you  1     This  is  a  surprise." 

"  Everything  is  a  surprise  to  you,  Basil,  when  it 
happens." 

"  True ;  I  keep  the  world  fresh,  that  way." 

"  It  wouldn't  have  been  any  change  to  go  from 
one  city  to  another  for  the  summer.  We  might  as 
well  have  stayed  in  New  York." 

"  Yes,  I  wish  we  had  stayed,"  said  March,  idly 
humouring  a  conception  of  the  accomplished  fact. 
"  Mrs.  Green  would  have  let  us  have  the  gim- 
crackery  very  cheap  for  the  summer  months  ;  and 
we  could  have  made  all  sorts  of  nice  little  excursions 
and  trips  off,  and  been  twice  as  well  as  if  we  had 
spent  the  summer  away." 

"  Nonsense  !  You  know  we  couldn't  spend  the 
summer  in  New  York." 

"  I  know  I  could." 

"What  stuff  1     You  couldn't  manage." 


56  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"Oh  yes,  I  could.  I  could  take  my  meals  at 
Fulkerson's  widow's ;  or  at  Maroni's,  with  poor  old 
Lindau  :  he 's  got  to  dining  there  again.  Or,  I  could 
keep  house,  and  he  could  dine  with  me  here." 

There  was  a  teasing  look  in  March's  eyes,  and  he 
broke  into  a  laugh,  at  the  firmness  with  which  his 
wife  said,  "  I  think  if  there  is  to  be  any  house-keep- 
ing, I  will  stay,  too ;  and  help  to  look  after  it.  I 
would  try  not  intrude  upon  you  and  your  guest." 

"  Oh,  we  should  be  only  too  glad  to  have  you  join 
us,"  said  March,  playing  with  fire. 

"  Very  well,  then,  I  wish  you  would  take  him  off 
to  Maroni's,  the  next  time  he  comes  to  dine  here  ! " 
cried  his  wife. 

The  experiment  of  making  March's  old  friend  free 
of  his  house  had  not  given  her  all  the  pleasure  that 
so  kind  a  thing  ought  to  have  afforded  so  good  a 
woman.  She  received  Lindau  at  first  with  robust 
benevolence,  and  the  high  resolve  not  to  let  any  of 
his  little  peculiarities  alienate  her  from  a  sense  of 
his  claim  upon  her  sympathy  and  gratitude,  not  only 
as  a  man  who  had  been  so  generously  fond  of  her 
husband  in  his  youth,  but  a  hero  who  had  suffered 
for  her  country.  Her  theory  was  that  his  mutilation 
must  not  be  ignored,  but  must  be  kept  in  mind  as 
a  monument  of  his  sacrifice,  and  she  fortified  Bella 
with  this  conception,  so  that  the  child  bravely  sat 
next  his  maimed  arm  at  table  and  helped  him  to 
dishes  he  could  not  reach,  and  cut  up  his  meat  for 
him.  As  for  Mrs.  March  herself,  the  thought  of  his 
mutilation  made  her  a  little  faint;  she  was  not 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  57 

without  a  bewildered  resentment  of  its  presence  as  a 
sort  of  oppression.  She  did  not  like  his  drinking  so 
much  of  March's  beer,  either ;  it  was  no  harm,  but 
it  was  somehow  unworthy,  out  of  character  with  a 
hero  of  the  war.  But  what  she  really  could  not 
reconcile  herself  to  was  the  violence  of  Lindau's 
sentiments  concerning  the  whole  political  and  social 
fabric.  She  did  not  feel  sure  that  he  should  be 
allowed  to  say  such  things  before  the  children,  who 
had  been  nurtured  in  the  faith  of  Bunker  Hill  and 
Appomattox,  as  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  all 
possible  progress  in  human  rights.  As  a  woman 
she  was  naturally  an  aristocrat,  but  as  an  American 
she  was  theoretically  a  democrat ;  and  it  astounded, 
it  alarmed  her,  to  hear  American  democracy 
denounced  as  a  shuffling  evasion.  She  had  never 
cared  much  for  the  United  States  Senate,  but  she 
doubted  if  she  ought  to  sit  by  when  it  was  railed  at 
as  a  rich  man's  club.  It  shocked  her  to  be  told  that 
the  rich  and  poor  were  not  equal  before  the  law  in  a 
country  where  justice  must  be  paid  for  at  every  step 
in  fees  and  costs,  or  where  a  poor  man  must  go  to 
war  in  his  own  person,  and  a  rich  man  might  hire 
some  one  to  go  in  his.  Mrs.  March  felt  that  this 
rebellious  mind  in  Lindau  really  somehow  outlawed 
him  from  sympathy,  and  retroactively  undid  his  past 
suffering  for  the  country :  she  had  always  particu- 
larly valued  that  provision  of  the  law,  because  in 
forecasting  all  the  possible  mischances  that  might 
befall  her  own  son,  she  had  been  comforted  by  the 
thought  that  if  there  ever  was  another  war,  and  Tom 
3* 


58  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

were  drafted,  his  father  could  buy  him  a  substitute. 
Compared  with  such  blasphemy  as  this,  Lindau's 
declaration  that  there  was  not  equality  of  opportunity 
in  America,  and  that  fully  one-half  the  people  were 
debarred  their  right  to  the  pursuit  of  happiness  by 
the  hopeless  conditions  of  their  lives,  was  flattering 
praise.  She  could  not  listen  to  such  things  in  silence, 
though,  and  it  did  not  help  matters  when  Lindau 
met  her  arguments  with  facts  and  reasons  which  she 
felt  she  was  merely  not  sufficiently  instructed  to 
combat,  and  he  was  not  quite  gentlemanly  to  urge. 
"I  am  afraid  for  the  effect  on  the  children,"  she  said 
to  her  husband.  "  Such  perfectly  distorted  ideas — 
Tom  will  be  ruined  by  them." 

"  Oh,  let  Tom  find  out  Avhere  they  're  false," 
said  March.  "It  will  be  good  exercise  for  his 
faculties  of  research.  At  any  rate,  those  things  are 
getting  said  nowadays ;  he  '11  have  to  hear  them 
sooner  or  later." 

"  Had  he  better  hear  them  at  home  ?  "  demanded 
his  wife. 

"Why,  you  know,  as  you're  here  to  refute  them, 
Isabel,"  he  teased,  "  perhaps  it 's  the  best  place.  But 
don't  mind  poor  old  Lindau,  my  dear.  He  says  him- 
self that  his  parg  is  worse  than  his  pidte,  you  know." 

"Ah,  it's  too  late  now  to  mind  him,"  she  sighed. 
In  a  moment  of  rash  good  feeling,  or  perhaps  an 
exalted  conception  of  duty,  she  had  herself  proposed 
that  Lindau  should  come  every  week  and  read 
German  with  Tom ;  and  it  had  become  a  question 
first  how  they  could  get  him  to  take  pay  for  it,  and 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  59 

then  how  they  could  get  him  to  stop  it.  Mrs.  March 
never  ceased  to  wonder  at  herself  for  having  brought 
this  about,  for  she  had  warned  her  husband  against 
making  any  engagement  with  Lindau  which  would 
bring  him  regularly  to  the  house :  the  Germans 
stuck  so,  and  were  so  unscrupulously  dependent. 
Yet,  the  deed  being  done,  she  would  not  ignore  the 
duty  of  hospitality,  and  it  was  always  she  who  made 
the  old  man  stay  to  their  Sunday  evening  tea  when 
he  lingered  near  the  hour,  reading  Schiller  and 
Heine  and  Uhland  with  the  boy,  in  the  clean  shirt 
with  which  he  observed  the  day ;  Lindau's  linen 
was  not  to  be  trusted  during  the  week.  She  now 
concluded  a  season  of  mournful  reflection  by  saying, 
"He  will  get  you  into  trouble,  somehow,  Basil." 

"Well,  I  don't  know  how,  exactly.  I  regard 
Lindau  as  a  political  economist  of  an  unusual  type  ; 
but  I  shall  not  let  him  array  me  against  the  consti- 
tuted authorities.  Short  of  that,  I  think  I  am  safe." 

"Well,  be  careful,  Basil;  be  careful.  You  know 
you  are  so  rash." 

"  I  suppose  I  may  continue  to  pity  him  ?  He  is 
such  a  poor,  lonely  old  fellow.  Are  you  really  sorry 
he 's  come  into  our  lives;  my  dear  ? " 

"Xo,  no;  not  that.  I  feel  as  you  do  about  it; 
but. I  wish  I  felt  easier  about  him — sure,  that  is, 
that  we  're  not  doing  wrong  to  let  him  keep  on  talk- 
ing so."  . 

"  I  suspect  we  couldn't  help  it,"  March  returned 
lightly.  "  It 's  one  of  what  Lindau  calls  his  'brincibles' 
to  say  what  he  thinks." 


II. 


THE  Marches  had  no  longer  the  gross  appetite  for 
novelty  which  urges  youth  to  a  surfeit  of  strange 
scenes,  experiences,  ideas;  and  makes  travel,  with 
all  its  annoyances  and  fatigues,  an  inexhaustible 
delight.  But  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  chief 
pleasure  of  their  life  in  New  York  Avas  from  its 
quality  of  foreignness :  the  flavour  of  olives,  which, 
once  tasted,  can  never  be  forgotten.  The  olives 
may  not  be  of  the  first  excellence ;  they  may  be  a 
little  stale,  and  small  and  poor,  to  begin  with,  but 
they  are  still  olives,  and  the  fond  palate  craves  them. 
The  sort  which  grew  in  New  York,  on  lower  Sixth 
Avenue  and  in  the  region  of  Jefferson  Market  and 
on  the  soft  exposures  south  of  Washington  Square, 
were  none  the  less  acceptable  because  they  were  of 
the  commonest  Italian  variety. 

The  Marches  spent  a  good  deal  of  time  and  money 
in  a  grocery  of  that  nationality,  where  they  found 
all  the  patriotic  comestibles  and  potables,  and  re- 
newed, their  faded  Italian  with  the  friendly  family 
in  charge.  Italian  table-wholes  formed  the  adventure 
of  the  week,  on  the  day  when  Mrs.  March  let  her 
domestics  go  out,  and  went  herself  to  dine  abroad 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  61 

with  her  husband  and  children ;  and  they  became 
adept  in  the  restaurants  where  they  were  served, 
and  which  they  varied  almost  from  dinner  to  dinner. 
The  perfect  decorum  of  these  places,  and  their  im- 
munity from  offence  in  any,  emboldened  the  Marches 
to  experiment  in  Spanish  restaurants,  where  red 
pepper  and  beans  insisted  in  every  dinner,  and 
where  once  they  chanced  upon  a  night  of  ollapodrida, 
with  such  appeals  to  March's  memory  of  a  boyish 
ambition  to  taste  the  dish  that  he  became  poetic  and 
then  pensive  over  its  cabbage  and  carrots,  peas  and 
bacon.  For  a  rare  combination  of  international 
motives  they  prized  most  the  table-d'hote  of  a  French 
lady,  who  had  taken  a  Spanish  husband  in  a  second 
marriage,  and  had  a  Cuban  negro  for  her  cook,  with 
a  cross-eyed  Alsatian  for  waiter,  and  a  slim  young 
South  American  for  cashier.  March  held  that  some- 
thing of  the  catholic  character  of  these  relations 
expressed  itself  in  the  generous  and  tolerant  variety 
of  the  dinner,  which  was  singularly  abundant  for 
fifty  cents,  without  wine.  At  one  very  neat  French 
place  he  got  a  dinner  at  the  same  price  with  wine, 
but  it  was  not  so  abundant ;  and  March  inquired 
in  fruitless  speculation  why  the  table-d'Mte  of  the 
Italians,  a  notoriously  frugal  and  abstemious  people, 
should  be  usually  more  than  you  wanted  at  seventy- 
five  cents  and  a  dollar,  and  that  of  the  French  rather 
less  for  half  a  dollar.  He  could  not  see  that  the 
frequenters  were  greatly  different  at  the  different 
places;  they  were  mostly  Americans,  of  subdued 
manners  and  conjecturably  subdued  fortunes,  with 


62  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

here  and  there  a  table  full  of  foreigners.  There  was 
no  noise  and  not  much  smoking  anywhere ;  March 
liked  going  to  that  neat  French  place  because  there 
Madame  sat  enthroned  and  high  behind  a  comptoir  at 
one  side  of  the  room,  and  everybody  saluted  her  in 
going  out.  It  was  there  that  a  gentle-looking 
young  couple  used  to  dine,  in  whom  the  Marches 
became  effectlessly  interested,  because  they  thought 
they  looked  like  that  when  they  were  }roung.  The 
wife  had  an  aesthetic  dress,  and  defined  her  pretty 
head  by  Avearing  her  back-hair  pulled  up  very  tight 
under  her  bonnet;  the  husband  had  dreamy  eyes 
set  wide  apart  under  a  pure  forehead.  "  They  are 
artists,  Aiigust,  I  think,"  March  suggested  to  the 
waiter,  when  he  had  vainly  asked  about  them. 
"  Oh,  hartis,  cedenly,"  August  consented ;  but 
Heaven  knows  whether  they  were,  or  what  they 
were  :  March  never  learned. 

This  immunity  from  acquaintance,  this  touch-and- 
go  qualit}7  in  their  New  York  sojourn,  this  almost 
loss  of  individuality  at  times,  after  the  intense 
identification  of  their  Boston  life,  was  a  relief,  though 
Mrs.  March  had  her  misgivings,  and  questioned 
whether  it  were  not  perhaps  too  relaxing  to  the 
moral  fibre.  March  refused  to  explore  his  con- 
science ;  he  allowed  that  it  might  be  so ;  but  he 
said  he  liked  now  and  then  to  feel  his  personality  in 
that  state  of  solution.  They  went  and  sat  a  good 
deal  in  the  softening  evenings  among  the  infants 
and  dotards  of  Latin  extraction  in  Washington 
Square,  safe  from  all  who  ever  knew  them,  and 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  Dd 

enjoyed  the  advancing  season,  which  thickened  the 
foliage  of  the  trees  and  flattered  out  of  sight  the 
churchwarden's  gothic  of  the  University  Building. 
The  infants  were  sometimes  cross,  and  cried  in  their 
weary  mothers'  or  little  sisters'  arms ;  but  they  did 
not  disturb  the  dotards,  who  slept,  some  with  their 
heads  fallen  forward,  and  some  with  their  heads 
fallen  back;  March  arbitrarily  distinguished  those 
with  the  drooping  faces  as  tipsy  and  ashamed  to 
confront  the  public.  The  small  Italian  children 
raced  up  and  down  the  asphalte  paths,  playing 
American  games  of  tag  and  hide-and-whoop ;  larger 
boys  passed  ball,  in  training  for  potential  champion- 
ships. The  Marches  sat  and  mused,  or  quarrelled 
fitfully  about  where  they  should  spend  the  summer, 
like  sparrows,  he  once  said,  till  the  electric  lights 
began  to  show  distinctly  among  the  leaves,  and  they 
looked  round  and  found  the  infants  and  dotards 
gone  and  the  benches  filled  with  lovers.  That  was 
the  signal  for  the  Marches  to  go  home.  He  said  that 
the  spectacle  of  so  much  courtship  as  the  eye  might 
take  in  there  at  a  glance  was  not,  perhaps,  oppres- 
sive, but  the  thought  that  at  the  same  hour  the  same 
thing  was  going  on  all  over  the  country,  wherever 
two  young  fools  could  get  together,  was  more  than 
he  could  bear ;  he  did  not  deny  that  it  was  natural, 
and,  in  a  measure,  authorised,  but  he  declared  that 
it  was  hackneyed  ;  and  the  fact  that  it  must  go  on 
for  ever,  as  long  as  the  race  lasted,  made  him  tired. 

At  home,  generally,  they  found  that  the  children 
had  not  missed  them,  and  were  perfectly  safe.     It 


64  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

was  one  of  the  advantages  of  a  flat  that  they  could 
leave  the  children  there  whenever  they  liked  with- 
out anxiety.  They  liked  better  staying  there  than 
wandering  about  in  the  evening  with  their  parents, 
whose  excursions  seemed  to  them  somewhat  aimless, 
and  their  pleasures  insipid.  They  studied,  or  read, 
or  looked  out  of  the  window  at  the  street  sights ; 
and  their  mother  always  came  back  to  them  with  a 
pang  for  their  lonesomeness.  Bella  knew  some  little 
girls  in  the  house,  but  in  a  ceremonious  way ;  Tom 
had  formed  no  friendships  among  the  boys  at  school 
such  as  he  had  left  in  Boston  ;  as  nearly  as  he  could 
explain,  the  New  York  fellows  carried  canes  at  an 
age  when  they  would  have  had  them  broken  for 
them  by  the  other  boys  at  Boston  :  and  they  were 
both  sissy ish  and  fast.  It  was  probably  prejudice ; 
he  never  could  say  exactly  what  their  demerits  were, 
and  neither  he  nor  Bella  was  apparently  so  homesick 
as  they  pretended,  though  they  answered  inquirers, 
the  one  that  New  York  was  a  hole,  and  the  other 
that  it  was  horrid,  and  that  all  they  lived  for  was  to 
get  back  to  Boston.  In  the  meantime  they  were 
thrown  much  upon  each  other  for  society,  which 
March  said  was  well  for  both  of  them ;  he  did  not 
mind  their  cultivating  a  little  gloom  and  the  sense 
of  a  common  wrong ;  it  made  them  better  com- 
rades, and  it  was  providing  them  with  amusing 
reminiscences  for  the  future.  They  really  en- 
joyed Bohemianising  in  that  harmless  way  :  though 
Tom  had  his  doubts  of  its  respectability;  he  was 
very  punctilious  about  his  sister,  and  went  round 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  65 

from  his  own  school  every  day  to  fetch  her  home 
from  hers.  The  whole  family  went  to  the  theatre  a 
good  deal,  and  enjoyed  themselves  together  in  their 
desultory  explorations  of  the  city. 

They  lived  near  Greenwich  Village,  and  March 
liked  strolling  through  its  quaintness  toAvard  the 
water-side  on  a  Sunday,  when  a  hereditary  Sabbata- 
rianism kept  his  wife  at  home  ;  he  made  her  observe 
that  it  even  kept  her  at  home  from  church.  He 
found  a  lingering  quality  of  pure  Americanism  in 
the  region,  and  he  said  the  very  bells  called  to  wor- 
ship in  a  nasal  tone.  He  liked  the  streets  of  small 
brick  houses,  with  here  and  there  one  painted  red, 
and  the  mortar  lines  picked  out  in  white,  and  with 
now  and  then  a  fine  wooden  portal  of  fluted  pillars 
and  a  bowed  transom.  The  rear  of  the  tenement- 
houses  showed  him  the  picturesqueness  of  clothes- 
lines fluttering  far  aloft,  as  in  Florence ;  and  the 
new  apartment-houses,  breaking  the  old  sky-line 
with  their  towering  stories,  implied  a  life  as  alien  to 
the  American  manner  as  anything  in  continental 
Europe.  In  fact,  foreign  faces  and  foreign  tongues 
prevailed  in  Greenwich  Village,  but  no  longer 
German  or  even  Irish  tongues  or  faces.  The  eyes 
and  ear-rings  of  Italians  twinkled  in  and  out  of  the 
alleyways  and  basements,  and  they  seemed  to 
abound  even  in  the  streets,  where  long  ranks  of 
trucks  drawn  up  in  Sunday  rest  along  the  curb- 
stones suggested  the  presence  of  a  race  of  sturdier 
strength  than  theirs.  March  liked  the  swarthy, 
strange  visages ;  he  found  nothing  menacing  for 


66  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

the  future  in  them  ;  for  wickedness  he  had  to  satisfy 
himself  as  he  could  with  the  sneering,  insolent, 
clean-shaven  mug  of  some  rare  American  of  the 
b'hoy  type,  now  almost  as  extinct  in  Xew  York  as 
the  dodo  or  the  volunteer  fireman.  When  he  had 
found  his  way,  among  the  ash-barrels  and  the  groups 
of  decently  dressed  church-goers,  to  the  docks,  he 
experienced  a  sufficient  excitement  in  the  recent 
arrival  of  a  French  steamer,  whose  sheds  were 
thronged  with  hacks  and  express-wagons,  and  in  a 
tacit  inquiry  into  the  emotions  of  the  passengers, 
fresh  from  the  cleanliness  of  Paris,  and  now  driving 
up  through  the  filth  of  those  streets. 

Some  of  the  streets  were  filthier  than  others ; 
there  was  at  least  a  choice  ;  there  were  boxes  and 
barrels  of  kitchen  offal  on  all  the  sidewalks,  but  not 
everywhere  manure-heaps,  and  in  some  places  the 
stench  was  mixed  with  the  more  savoury  smell  of 
cooking.  One  Sunday  morning,  before  the  winter 
was  quite  gone,  the  sight  of  the  frozen  refuse  melt- 
ing in  heaps,  and  particularly  the  loathsome  edges 
of  the  rotting  ice  near  the  gutters,  with  the  strata 
of  waste-paper  and  straw  litter,  and  egg-shells  and 
orange-peel,  potato-skins  and  cigar-stumps,  made 
him  unhappy.  He  gave  a  whimsical  shrug  for  the 
squalor  of  the  neighbouring  houses,  and  said  to  him- 
self rather  than  the  boy  who  was  with  him  :  "  It 's 
curious,  isn't  it,  how  fond  the  poor  people  are  of 
these  unpleasant  thoroughfares  ?  You  always  find 
them  living  in  the  worst  streets." 

"  The  burden  of  all  the  wrong  in  the  world  comes 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  67 

on  the  poor,"  said  the  boy.  "  Every  sort  of  fraud 
and  swindling  hurts  them  the  worst.  The  city 
wastes  the  money  it 's  paid  to  clean  the  streets  with, 
and  the  poor  have  to  suffer,  for  they  can't  afford  to 
pay  twice,  like  the  rich." 

March  stopped  short.  "  Hallo,  Tom !  Is  that 
your  wisdom  ? " 

"  It 's  what  Mr.  Lindau  says,"  answered  the  boy 
doggedly,  as  if  not  pleased  to  have  his  ideas  mocked 
at,  even  if  they  Avere  second-hand. 

"  And  you  didn't  tell  him  that  the  poor  lived  in 
dirty  streets  because  they  liked  them,  and  were  too- 
lazy  and  worthless  to  have  them  cleaned  ? " 

"  No  ;  I  didn't." 

"  I  'm  surprised.  What  do  you  think  of  Lindau, 
generally  speaking,  Tom  ? " 

"  Well,  sir,  I  don't  like  the  way  he  talks  about 
some  things.  I  don't  suppose  this  country  is  per- 
fect, but  I  think  it 's  about  the  best  there  is,  and  it 
don't  do  any  good  to  look  at  its  drawbacks  all  the 
time." 

"  Sound,  my  son,"  said  March,  putting  his  hand 
on  the  boy's  shoulder  and  beginning  to  walk  on. 
"  Well  ?  " 

"  Well,  then,  he  says  that  it  isn't  the  public  frauds 
only  that  the  poor  have  to  pay  for,  but  they  have  to 
pay  for  all  the  vices  of  the  rich ;  that  when  a  specu- 
lator fails,  or  a  bank  cashier  defaults,  or  a  firm 
suspends,  or  hard  times  come,  it's  the  poor  who 
have  to  give  up  necessaries  where  the  rich  give  up 
luxuries." 


68  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Well,  well !     And  then  ?" 

"Well,  then  I  think  the  crank  comes  in,  in 
Mr.  Lindau.  He  says  there 's  no  need  of  failures 
or  frauds  or  hard  times.  It's  ridiculous.  There 
always  have  been  and  there  always  will  be.  But 
if  you  tell  him  that,  it  seems  to  make  him  perfectly 
furious." 

March  repeated  the  substance  of  this  talk  to  his 
wife.  "  I  'm  glad  to  know  that  Tom  can  see  through 
such  ravings.  He  has  lots  of  good  common-sense." 

It  was  the  afternoon  of  the  same  Sunday,  and 
they  were  sauntering  up  Fifth  Avenue,  and  admiring 
the  wide  old  double  houses  at  the  lower  end  ;  at  one 
corner  they  got  a  distinct  pleasure  out  of  the  gnarled 
elbows  that  a  pollarded  wistaria  leaned  upon  the  top 
of  a  garden  wall — for  its  convenience  in  looking  into 
the  street,  he  said.  The  line  of  these  comfortable 
dwellings,  once  so  fashionable,  was  continually  broken 
by  the  facades  of  shops ;  and  March  professed  him- 
self vulgarised  by  a  want  of  style  in  the  people  they 
met  in  their  walk  to  Twenty-third  Street. 

"  Take  me  somewhere  to  meet  my  fellow-exclusives, 
Isabel,"  he  demanded.  "  I  pine  for  the  society  of 
my  peers." 

He  hailed  a  passing  omnibus,  and  made  his  wife 
get  on  the  roof  with  him.  "Think  of  our  doing 
such  a  thing  in  Boston ! "  she  sighed,  with  a  little 
shiver  of  satisfaction  in  her  immunity  from  recogni- 
tion and  comment. 

"You  wouldn't  be  afraid  to  do  it  in  London  or 
Paris?" 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  69 

"No;  we  should  be  strangers  there — just  as  we 
are  in  New  York.  I  wonder  how  long  one  could  be 
a  stranger  here." 

"  Oh,  indefinitely,  in  our  way  of  living.  The 
place  is  really  vast,  so  much  larger  than  it  used  to 
seem,  and  so  heterogeneous." 

When  they  got  down  very  far  uptown,  and  began 
to  walk  back  by  Madison  Avenue,  they  found 
themselves  in  a  different  population  from  that  they 
dwelt  among  ;  not  heterogeneous  at  all ;  very  homo- 
geneous, and  almost  purely  American ;  the  only 
qualification  was  American  Hebrew.  Such  a  well- 
dressed,  well-satisfied,  well-fed  looking  crowd  poured 
down  the  broad  sidewalks  before  the  handsome,, 
stupid  houses  that  March  could  easily  pretend  he 
had  got  among  his  fellow-plutocrats  at  last.  Still 
he  expressed  his  doubts  whether  this  Sunday  after- 
noon parade,  which  seemed  to  be  a  thing  of  custom, 
represented  the  best  form  among  the  young  people 
of  that  region ;  he  wished  he  knew ;  he  blamed 
himself  for  becoming  of-  a  fastidious  conjecture ;  he 
could  not  deny  the  fashion  and  the  richness  and  the 
indigeneity  of  the  spectacle  ;  the  promenaders  looked 
New  Yorky ;  they  were  the  sort  of  people  whom 
you  would  know  for  New  Yorkers  elsewhere,  so 
well  equipped  and  so  perfectly  kept  at  all  points. 
Their  silk  hats  shone,  and  their  boots ;  their  f  rocka 
had  the  right  distension  behind,  and  their  bonnets; 
perfect  poise  and  distinction. 

The  Marches  talked  of  these  and  other  facts  of 

their  appearance,  and  curiously  questioned  whether 
2  D 


70  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

this  were  the  best  that  a  great  material  civilisation 
could  come  to;  it  looked  a  little  dull.  The  men's 
faces  were  shrewd  and  alert,  and  yet  they  looked 
dull;  the  women's  were  pretty  and  knowing,  and 
yet  dull.  It  was,  probably,  the  holiday  expression 
of  the  vast,  prosperous  commercial  class,  with 
unlimited  money,  and  no  ideals  that  money  could 
not  realise  ;  fashion  and  comfort  were  all  that  they 
desired  to  compass,  and  the  culture  that  furnishes 
showily,  that  decorates  and  that  tells ;  the  culture, 
say,  of  plays  and  operas,  rather  than  books. 

Perhaps  the  observers  did  the  promenaders  in- 
justice; they  might  not  have  been  as  common- 
minded  as  they  looked.  "But/'  March  said,  "I 
understand  now  why  the  poor  people  don't  come  up 
here  and  live  in  this  clean,  handsome,  respectable 
quarter  of  the  town ;  they  would  be  bored  to  death. 
On  the  whole,  I  think  I  should  prefer  Mott  Street 
myself." 

In  other  walks  the  Marches  tried  to  find  some  of 
the  streets  they  had  wandered  through  the  first  day 
of  their  wedding  journey  in  New  York,  so  long  ago. 
They  could  not  make  sure  of  them ;  but  once  they 
ran  down  to  the  Battery,  and  easily  made  sure  of 
that,  though  not  in  its  old  aspect.  They  recalled 
the  hot  morning,  when  they  sauntered  over  the 
trodden  weed  that  covered  the  sickly  grass-plots 
there,  and  sentimentalised  the  sweltering  paupers 
who  had  crept  out  of  the  squalid  tenements  about 
for  a  breath  of  air  after  a  sleepless  night.  Now  the 
paupers  were  gone,  and  where  the  old  mansions 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  71 

that  had  fallen  to  their  use  once  stood,  there  towered 
aloft  and  abroad  those  heights  and  masses  of  many- 
storied  brick-work  for  which  architecture  has  yet 
no  proper  form  and  aesthetics  no  name.  The  trees 
and  shrubs,  all  in  their  young  spring  green,  blew 
briskly  over  the  guarded  turf  in  the  south  wind  that 
came  up  over  the  water ;  and  in  the  well-paved  alleys 
the  ghosts  of  eighteenth- century  fashion  might  have 
met  each  other  in  their  old  haunts,  and  exchanged 
stately  congratulations  upon  its  vastly  bettered  con- 
dition, and  perhaps  puzzled  a  little  over  the  colossal 
lady  on  Bedloe's  Island,  with  her  lifted  torch,  and 
still  more  over  the  curving  tracks  and  chalet-stations 
of  the  Elevated  road.  It  is  an  outlook  of  unrivalled 
beauty  across  the  bay,  that  smokes  and  flashes  with 
the  innumerable  stacks  and  sails  of  commerce,  to  the 
hills  beyond,  where  the  moving  forest  of  masts  halts 
at  the  shore,  and  roots  itself  in  the  groves  of  the 
many-villaged  uplands.  The  Marches  paid  the 
charming  prospect  a  willing  duty,  and  rejoiced  in  it 
as  generously  as  if  it  had  been  their  own.  Perhaps 
it  was,  they  decided.  He  said  people  owned  more 
things  in  common  than  they  were  apt  to  think ;  and 
they  drew  the  consolations  of  proprietorship  from  the 
excellent  management  of  Castle  Garden,  which  they 
penetrated  for  a  moment's  glimpse  of  the  huge 
rotunda,  where  the  emigrants  first  set  foot  on  our 
continent.  It  warmed  their  hearts,  so  easily  moved 
to  any  cheap  sympathy,  to  see  the  friendly  care  the 
nation  took  of  these  humble  guests ;  they  found  it 
even  pathetic  to  hear  the  proper  authority  calling 


72  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

out  the  names  of  such  as  had  kin  or  acquaintance 
waiting  there  to  meet  them.  No  one  appeared 
troubled  or  anxious ;  the  officials  had  a  conscien- 
tious civility ;  the  government  seemed  to  manage 
their  welcome  as  well  as  a  private  company  or  cor- 
poration could  have  done.  In  fact,  it  was  after  the 
simple  strangers  had  left  the  government  care  that 
March  feared  their  woes  might  begin ;  and  he  would 
have  liked  the  government  to  follow  each  of  them 
to  his  home,  wherever  he  meant  to  fix  it  within  our 
borders.  He  made  note  of  the  looks  of  the  licensed 
runners  and  touters  waiting  for  the  immigrants  out- 
side the  government  premises ;  he  intended  to  work 
them  up  into  a  dramatic  effect  in  some  sketch,  but 
they  remained  mere  material  in  his  memorandum- 
book,  together  with  some  quaint  old  houses  on  the 
Sixth  Avenue  road,  which  he  had  noticed  on  the  way 
down.  On  the  way  up,  these  were  superseded  in 
his  regard  by  some  hip-roof  structures  on  the 
Ninth  Avenue,  which  he  thought  more  Dutch- 
looking.  The  perspectives  of  the  cross-streets  to- 
ward the  river  were  very  lively,  with  their  turmoil 
of  trucks  and  cars  and  carts  and  hacks  and  foot- 
passengers,  ending  in  the  chimneys  and  masts  of 
shipping,  and  final  gleams  of  dancing  water.  At  a 
very  noisy  corner,  clangorous  with  some  sort  of  iron- 
working,  he  made  his  wife  enjoy  with  him  the  quiet 
sarcasm  of  an  inn  that  called  itself  the  Homelike 
Hotel,  and  he  speculated  at  fantastic  length  on  the 
gentle  associations  of  one  who  should  have  passed 
his  youth  under  its  roof. 


III. 


FIRST  and  last,  the  Marches  did  a  good  deal  of 
travel  on  the  Elevated  roads,  which,  he  said,  gave 
you  such  glimpses  of  material  aspects  in  the  city  as 
some  violent  invasion  of  others'  lives  might  afford 
in  human  nature.  Once,  when  the  impulse  of 
adventure  was  very  strong  in  them,  they  went  quite 
the  length  of  the  West  side  lines,  and  saw  the  city 
pushing  its  way  by  irregular  advances  into  the 
country.  Some  spaces,  probably  held  by  the  owners 
for  that  rise  in  value  which  the  industry  of  others 
providentially  gives  to  the  land  of  the  wise  and 
good,  it  left  vacant  comparatively  far  down  the  road, 
and  built  up  others  at  remoter  points.  It  was  a 
world  of  lofty  apartment-houses  beyond  the  Park, 
springing  up  in  isolated  blocks,  with  stretches  of 
invaded  rusticity  between,  and  here  and  there  an 
old  country-seat  standing  dusty  in  its  budding  vines 
with  the  ground  before  it  in  rocky  upheaval  for  city 
foundations.  But  wherever  it  went  or  wherever  it 
paused,  New  York  gave  its  peculiar  stamp ;  and  the 
adventurers  were  amused  to  find  One  Hundred  and 
Twenty-fifth  Street  inchoately  like  Twenty-third 
Street  and  Fourteenth  Street  in  its  shops  and 
VOL.  II.— 4 


74  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

shoppers.  The  butchers'  shops  and  milliners'  shops 
on  the  avenue  might  as  well  have  been  at  Tenth  as 
at  One  Hundredth  Street. 

The  adventurers  were  not  often  so  adventurous. 
Tliev  recognised   that   in    their   willingness    to   let 

•/  o  o  ^ 

their  fancy  range  for  them,  and  to  let  speculation  do 
the  work  of  inquiry,  they  were  no  longer  young. 
Their  point  of  view  was  singularly  unchanged,  and 
their  impressions  of  New  York  remained  the  same 
that  they  had  been  fifteen  years  before  :  huge,  noisy, 
ugly,  kindly,  it  seemed  to  them  now  as  it  seemed 
then.  The  main  difference  was  that  they  saw  it 
more  now  as  a  life,  and  then  they  only  regarded  it 
as  a  spectacle ;  and  March  could  not  release  himself 
from  a  sense  of  complicity  with  it,  no  matter  what 
whimsical,  or  alien,  or  critical  attitude  he  took.  A 
sense  of  the  striving  and  the  suffering  deeply 
possessed  him ;  and  this  grew  the  more  intense  as 
he  gained  some  knowledge  of  the  forces  at  work — 
forces  of  pity,  of  destruction,  of  perdition,  of  sal- 
vation. He  wandered  about  on  Sunday  not  only 
through  the  streets,  but  into  this  tabernacle  and 
that,  as  the  spirit  moved  him,  and  listened  to  those 
who  dealt  with  Christianity  as  a  system  of  economics 
as  well  as  a  religion.  He  could  not  get  his  wife  to 
go  with  him ;  she  listened  to  his  report  of  what  he 
heard,  and  trembled ;  it  all  seemed  fantastic  and 
menacing.  She  lamented  the  literary  peace,  the 
intellectual  refinement  of  the  life  they  had  left 
behind  them ;  and  he  owned  it  was  very  pretty,  but 
he  said  it  was  not  life — it  was  death-in-life.  She 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  75 

liked  to  hear  him  talk  in  that  strain  of  virtuous  self- 
denunciation,  but  she  asked  him,  "  Which  of  your 
prophets  are  you  going  to  follow?"  and  he  answered, 
"All — all!  And  a  fresh  one  every  Sunday."  And 
so  they  got  their  laugh  out  of  it  at  last,  but  with 
some  sadness  at  heart,  and  with  a  dim  consciousness 
that  they  had  got  their  laugh  out  of  too  many  things 
in  life. 

What  really  occupied  and  compassed  his  activities, 
in  spite  of  his  strenuous  reveries  of  work  beyond  it, 
was  his  editorship.  On  its  social  side  it  had  not 
fulfilled  all  the  expectations  which  Fulkerson's 
radiant  sketch  of  its  duties  and  relations  had  caused 
him  to  form  of  it.  Most  of  the  contributions  came 
from  a  distance ;  even  the  articles  written  in  New 
York  reached  him  through  the  post,  and  so  far  from 
having  his  valuable  time,  as  they  called  it,  consumed 
in  interviews  with  his  collaborators,  he  rarely  saw 
any  of  them.  The  boy  on  the  stairs,  who  was  to 
fence  him  from  importunate  visitors,  led  a  life  of 
luxurious  disoccupation,  and  whistled  almost  unin- 
terruptedly. When  any  one  came,  March  found 
himself  embarrassed  and  a  little  anxious.  The 
visitors  were  usually  young  men,  terribly  respectful, 
but  cherishing,  as  he  imagined,  ideals  and  opinions 
chasmally  different  from  his  ;  and  he  felt  in  their 
presence  something  like  an  anachronism,  something 
like  a  fraud.  He  tried  to  freshen  up  his  sympathies 
on  them,  to  get  at  what  they  were  really  thinking  and 
feeling,  and  it  was  some  time  before  he  could  under- 
stand that  they  were  not  really  thinking  and  feeling 


T6  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

anything  of  their  own  concerning  their  art,  but  were 
necessarily,  in  their  quality  of  young,  inexperienced 
men,  mere  acceptants  of  older  men's  thoughts  and 
feelings,  whether  they  were  tremendously  conserva- 
tive, as  some  were,  or  tremendously  progressive,  as 
others  were.  Certain  of  them  called  themselves 
realists,  certain  romanticists ;  but  none  of  them 
seemed  to  know  what  realism  was,  or  what  romanti- 
cism ;  they  apparently  supposed  the  difference  a 
difference  of  material.  March  had  imagined  himself 
taking  home  to  lunch  or  dinner  the  aspirants  for 
editorial  favour  whom  he  liked,  whether  he  liked 
their  work  or  not ;  but  this  was  not  an  easy  matter. 
Those  who  were  at  all  interesting  seemed  to  have 
engagements  and  preoccupations  ;  after  two  or  three 
experiments  with  the  bashfuller  sort — those  who 
had  come  up  to  the  metropolis  with  manuscripts  in 
their  hands,  in  the  good  old  literary  tradition — he 
wondered  whether  he  was  otherwise  like  them  when 
he  was  young  like  them.  He  could  not  flatter  himself 
that  he  was  not ;  and  yet  he  had  a  hope  that  the 
world  had  grown  worse  since  his  time,  which  his 
wife  encouraged. 

Mrs.  March  was  not  eager  to  pursue  the  hospitali- 
ties which  she  had  at  first  imagined  essential  to  the 
literary  prosperity  of  Every  Other  Week ;  her  family 
sufficed  her ;  she  would  willingly  have  seen  no  one 
out  of  it  but  the  strangers  at  the  weekly  table-d'Jtote 
dinner,  or  the  audiences  at  the  theatres.  March's 
devotion  to  his  work  made  him  reluctant  to  delegate 
it  to  any  one ;  and  as  the  summer  advanced,  and 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  77 

the  question  of  where  to  go  grew  more  vexed,  he 
showed  a  man's  base  willingness  to  shirk  it  for  him- 
self by  not  going  anywhere.  He  asked  his  wife  why 
she  did  not  go  somewhere  with  the  children,  and  he 
joined  her  in  a  search  for  non-malarial  regions  on 
the  map  when  she  consented  to  entertain  this  notion. 
But  when  it  came  to  the  point  she  would  not  go; 
he  offered  to  go  with  her  then,  and  then  she  would 
not  let  him.  She  said  she  knew  he  would  be 
anxious  about  his  work ;  he  protested  that  he  could 
take  it  with  him  to  any  distance  within  a  few  hours, 
but  she  would  not  be  persuaded.  She  would  rather 
he  stayed;  the  effect  would  be  better  with  Mr. 
Fulkerson;  they  could  make  excursions,  and  they 
could  all  get  off  a  week  or  two  to  the  sea-shore  near 
Boston — the  only  real  sea-shore — in  August.  The 
excursions  were  practically  confined  to  a  single  day 
at  Coney  Island ;  and  once  they  got  as  far  as  Boston 
on  the  way  to  the  sea-shore  near  Boston ;  that  is, 
Mrs.  March  and  the  children  went ;  an  editorial  exi- 
gency kept  March  at  the  last  moment.  The  Boston 
streets  seemed  very  queer  and  clean  and  empty  to 
the  children,  and  the  buildings  little  ;  in  the  horse- 
cars  the  Boston  faces  seemed  to  arraign  their  mother 
with  a  down-drawn  severity  that  made  her  feel  very 
guilty.  She  knew  that  this  was  merely  the  Puri- 
tan mask,  the  cast  of  a  dead  civilisation,  which 
people  of  very  amiable  and  tolerant  minds  were 
doomed  to  wear,  and  she  sighed  to  think  that  less 
than  a  year  of  the  heterogeneous  gaiety  of  New 
York  should  have  made  her  afraid  of  it.  The  sky 


78  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

seemed  cold  and  grey;  the  east  wind,  which  she  had 
always  thought  so  delicious  in  summer,  cut  her  to 
the  heart.  She  took  her  children  up  to  the  South  End, 
and  in  the  pretty  square  where  they  used  to  live 
they  stood  before  their  alienated  home,  and  looked 
up  at  its  close-shuttered  windows.  The  tenants 
must  have  been  away,  but  Mrs.  March  had  not  the 
courage  to  ring  and  make  sure,  though  she  had 
always  promised  herself  that  she  would  go  all  over 
the  house  when  she  came  back,  and  see  how  they 
had  used  it ;  she  could  pretend  a  desire  for  some- 
thing she  wished  to  take  away.  She  knew  she 
could  not  bear  it  now ;  and  the  children  did  not 
seem  eager.  She  did  not  push  on  to  the  seaside ; 
it  would  be  forlorn  there  without  their  father ;  she 
was  glad  to  go  back  to  him  in  the  immense,  friendly 
homelessness  of  New  York,  and  hold  him  answer- 
able for  the  change,  in  her  heart  or  her  mind,  which 
made  its  shapeless  tumult  a  refuge  and  a  consola- 
tion. 

She  found  that  he  had  been  giving  the  cook  a 
holiday,  and  dining  about  hither  and  thither  with 
Fulkerson.  Once  he  had  dined  with  him  at  the 
widow's  (as  they  always  called  Mrs.  Leighton),  and 
then  had  spent  the  evening  there,  and  smoked  with 
Fulkerson  and  Colonel  Woodburn  on  the  gallery 
overlooking  the  back  yard.  They  were  all  spending 
the  summer  in  New  York.  The  widow  had  got  so 
good  an  offer  for  her  house  at  St.  Barnaby  for  the 
summer  that  she  could  not  refuse  it ;  and  the 
"\Voodburns  found  New  York  a  watering-place  of 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  79 

exemplary  coolness  after  the  burning  Augusts  and 
Septembers  of  Charlottesburg. 

"  You  can  stand  it  well  enough  in  our  climate,  sir," 
the  colonel  explained,  "  till  you  come  to  the 
September  heat,  that  sometimes  runs  well  into 
October ;  and  then  you  begin  to  lose  your  temper, 
sir.  It 's  never  quite  so  hot  as  it  is  in  New  York 
at  times,  but  it's  hot  longer,  sir."  He  alleged,  as 
if  something  of  the  sort  were  necessary,  the  example 
of  a  famous  South-western  editor  who  spent  all  his 
summers  in  a  New  York  hotel  as  the  most  luxurious 
retreat  on  the  continent,  consulting  the  weather 
forecasts,  and  running  off  on  torrid  days  to  the 
mountains  or  the  sea,  and  then  hurrying  back  at  the 
promise  of  cooler  weather.  The  colonel  had  not 
found  it  necessary  to  do  this  yet ;  and  he  had  been 
reluctant  to  leave  town,  where  he  was  working  up 
a  branch  of  the  inquiry  which  had  so  long  occupied 
him,  in  the  libraries,  and  studying  the  great  problem 
of  labour  and  poverty  as  it  continually  presented 
itself  to  him  in  the  streets.  He  said  that  he  talked 
with  all  sorts  of  people,  whom  he  found  monstrously 
civil,  if  you  took  them  in  the  right  way ;  and  he 
went  everywhere  in  the  city  without  fear  and 
apparently  without  danger.  March  could  not  find 
out  that  he  had  ridden  his  hobby  into  the  homes  of 
want  which  he  visited,  or  had  proposed  their  enslave- 
ment to  the  inmates  as  a  short  and  simple  solution 
of  the  great  question  of  their  lives ;  he  appeared  to 
have  contented  himself  with  the  collection  of  facts 
for  the  persuasion  of  the  cultivated  classes.  It 


80  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

seemed  to  March  a  confirmation  of  this  impression 
that  the  colonel  should  address  his  deductions  from 
these  facts  so  unsparingly  to  him ;  he  listened  with 
a  respectful  patience,  for  which  Fulkerson  after- 
ward personally  thanked  him.  Fulkerson  said  it  was 
not  often  the  colonel  found  such  a  good  listener; 
generally  nobody  listened  but  Mrs.  Leighton,  who 
thought  his  ideas  were  shocking,  but  honoured  him 
for  holding  them  so  conscientiously.  Fulkerson  was 
glad  that  March,  as  the  literary  department,  had 
treated  the  old  gentleman  so  well,  because  there  was 
an  open  feud  between  him  and  the  art  department. 
Beaton  was  outrageously  rude,  Fulkerson  must  say ; 
though  as  for  that,  the  old  colonel  seemed  quite  able 
to  take  care  of  himself,  and  gave  Beaton  an  un- 
qualified contempt  in  return  for  his  unmannerlmess. 
The  worst  of  it  was,  it  distressed  the  old  lady  so ; 
she  admired  Beaton  as  much  as  she  respected  the 
colonel,  and  she  admired  Beaton,  Fulkerson  thought, 
rather  more  than  Miss  Leighton  did ;  he  asked 
March  if  he  had  noticed  them  together.  March  had 
noticed  them,  but  without  any  very  definite  im- 
pression except  that  Beaton  seemed  to  give  the 
whole  evening  to  the  girl.  Afterward  he  recollected 
that  he  had  fancied  her  rather  harassed  by  his 
devotion,  and  it  was  this  point  that  he  wished  to 
present  for  his  wife's  opinion. 

"  Girls  often  put  on  that  air,  she  said.  "  It 's  one 
of  their  ways  of  teasing.  But  then,  if  the  man  was 
really  very  much  in  love,  and  she  was  only  enough  in 
love  to  be  uncertain  of  herself,  she  might  very  well 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  81 

seem  troubled.    It  would  be  a  very  serious  question. 
Girls  often  don't  know  what  to  do  in  such  a  case." 

"Yes,"  said  March,  "I've  often  been  glad  that  I 
was  not  a  girl,  on  that  account.  But  I  guess  that 
on  general  principles  Beaton  is  not  more  in  love 
than  she  is.  I  couldn't  imagine  that  young  man 
being  more  in  love  with  anybody,  unless  it  was 
himself.  He  might  be  more  in  love  with  himself 
than  any  one  else  was." 

"  Well,  he  doesn't  interest  me  a  great  deal,  and  I 
can't  say  Miss  Leighton  does  either.  I  think  she 
can  take  care  of  herself.  She  has  herself  very  well 
in  hand." 

"Why  so  censorious?"  pleaded  March.  "I 
don't  defend  her  for  having  herself  in  hand;  but 
is  it  a  fault  1 " 

Mrs.  March  did  not  say.  She  asked,  "  And  how 
does  Mr.  Fulkerson's  affair  get  on  ? " 

"His  affair1?  You  really  think  it  is  one?  Well, 
I  've  fancied  so  myself,  and  I  've  had  an  idea  of 
some  time  asking  him ;  Fulkerson  strikes  one  as 
truly  domesticable,  conjugable  at  heart ;  but  I  Ve 
waited  for  him  to  speak." 

"  I  should  think  so." 

"  Yes.  He  's  never  opened  on  the  subject  yet. 
Do  you  know,  I  think  Fulkerson  has  his  moments 
of  delicacy." 

"  Moments  !  He 's  all  delicacy  in  regard  to 
women." 

"  Well,  perhaps  so.     There  is  nothing  in  them  to 
rouse  his  advertising  instincts." 
4* 


IV. 


THE  Dryfoos  family  stayed  in  town  till  August 
Then  the  father  went  West  again  to  look  after  his 
interests;  and  Mrs.  Mandel  took  the  two  girls  to 
one  of  the  great  hotels  in  Saratoga.  Fulkerson  said 
that  he  had  never  seen  anything  like  Saratoga  for 
fashion,  and  Mrs.  Mandel  remembered  that  in  her 
own  young  ladyhood  this  was  so  for  at  least  some 
weeks  of  the  year.  She  had  been  too  far  withdrawn 
from  fashion  since  her  marriage  to  know  whether  it 
was  still  so  or  not.  In  this,  as  in  so  many  other 
matters,  the  Dryfoos  family  helplessly  relied  upon 
Fulkerson,  in  spite  of  Dryfoos's  angry  determination 
that  he  should  not  run  the  family,  and  in  spite  of 
Christine's  doubt  of  his  omniscience ;  if  he  did  not 
know  everything,  she  was  aware  that  he  knew  more 
than  herself.  She  thought  that  they  had  a  right  to 
have  him  go  with  them  to  Saratoga,  or  at  least  go 
up  and  engage  their  rooms  beforehand ;  but  Fulker 
son  did  not  offer  to  do  either,  and  she  did  not  quite 
see  her  way  to  commanding  his  services.  The 
young  ladies  took  what  Mela  called  splendid  dresses 
with  them ;  they  sat  in  the  park  of  tall,  slim  trees 
which  the  hotel's  quadrangle  enclosed,  and  listened 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  83 

to  the  music  in  the  morning,  or  on  the  long  piazza 
in  the  afternoon  and  looked  at  the  driving  in  the 
street,  or  in  the  vast  parlours  by  night,  where  all 
the  other  ladies  were,  and  they  felt  that  they  were 
of  the  best  there.  But  they  knew  nobody,  and  Mrs. 
Mandel  was  so  particular  that  Mela  was  prevented 
from  continuing  the  acquaintance  even  of  the  few 
young  men  who  danced  with  her  at  the  Saturday- 
night  hops.  They  drove  about,  but  they  went  to 
places  without  knowing  why,  except  that  the  carriage 
man  took  them,  and  they  had  all  the  privileges  of  a 
proud  exclusivism  without  desiring  them.  Once  a 
motherly  matron  seemed  to  perceive  their  isolation, 
and  made  overtures  to  them,  but  then  desisted,  as 
if  repelled  by  Christine's  suspicion,  or  by  Mela's  too 
instant  and  hilarious  good-fellowship,  which  ex- 
pressed itself  in  hoarse  laughter  and  in  a  flow  of  talk 
full  of  topical  and  syntactical  freedom.  From  time 
to  time  she  offered  to  bet  Christine  that  if  Mr. 
Fulkersori  was  only  there  they  would  have  a  good 
time ;  she  wondered  what  they  were  all  doing  in 
New  York,  where  she  wished  herself ;  she  rallied 
her  sister  about  Beaton,  and  asked  her  why  she  did 
not  write  and  tell  him  to  come  up  there. 

Mela  knew  that  Christine  had  expected  Beaton  to 
follow  them.  Some  banter  had  passed  between 
them  to  this  effect ;  he  said  he  should  take  them  in 
on  his  way  home  to  Syracuse.  Christine  would  not 
have  hesitated  to  write  to  him  and  remind  him  of 
his  promise;  but  she  had  learned  to  distrust  her 
literature  with  Beaton  since  he  had  laughed  at  the 


84  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

spelling  in  a  scrap  of  writing  which  dropped  out  of 
her  music-book  one  night.  She  believed  that  he 
would  not  have  laughed  if  he  had  known  it  was 
hers ;  but  she  felt  that  she  could  hide  better  the 
deficiencies  which  were  not  committed  to  paper; 
she  could  manage  with  him  in  talking ;  she  was  too 
ignorant  of  her  ignorance  to  recognise  the  mistakes 
she  made  then.  Through  her  own  passion  she 
perceived  that  she  had  some  kind  of  fascination  for 
him ;  she  was  graceful,  and  she  thought  it  must  be 
that ;  she  did  not  understand  that  there  was  a  kind 
of  beauty  in  her  small,  irregular  features  that 
piqued  and  haunted  his  artistic  sense,  and  a  look  in 
her  black  eyes  beyond  her  intelligence  and  inten- 
tion. Once  he  sketched  her  as  they  sat  together, 
and  flattered  the  portrait  without  getting  what  he 
wanted  in  it ;  he  said  he  must  try  her  some  time  in 
colour ;  and  he  said  things  which,  when  she  made 
Mela  repeat  them,  could  only  mean  that  he  admired 
her  more  than  anybody  else.  He  came  fitfully,  but 
he  came  often,  and  she  rested  content  in  a  girl's  in- 
definiteness  concerning  the  affair ;  if  her  thought 
went  beyond  love-making  to  marriage,  she  believed 
that  she  could  have  him  if  she  wanted  him.  Her 
father's  money  counted  in  this;  she  divined  that 
Beaton  was  poor ;  but  that  made  no  difference  ;  she 
would  have  enough  for  both ;  the  money  would 
have  counted  as  an  irresistible  attraction  if  there 
had  been  no  other. 

The  affair  had  gone  on  in  spite  of  the  sidelong 
looks  of  restless  dislike  with  which  Dryfoos  regarded 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  85 

it ;  but  now  when  Beaton  did  not  come  to  Saratoga 
it  necessarily  dropped,  and  Christine's  content  with 
it.  She  bore  the  trial  as  long  as  she  could;  she 
used  pride  and  resentment  against  it;  but  at  last 
she  could  not  bear  it,  and  with  Mela's  help  she 
wrote  a  letter,  bantering  Beaton  on  his  stay  in 
New  York,  and  playfully  boasting  of  Saratoga.  It 
seemed  to  them  both  that  it  was  a  very  bright 
letter,  and  would  be  sure  to  bring  him ;  they  would 
have  had  no  scruple  about  sending  it  but  for  the 
doubt  they  had  whether  they  had  got  some  of  the 
words  right.  Mela  offered  to  bet  Christine  anything 
she  dared  that  they  were  right,  and  she  said,  Send 
it  anyway  ;  it  was  no  difference  if  they  were  wrong. 
But  Christine  could  not  endure  to  think  of  that 
laugh  of  Beaton's,  and  there  •  remained  only  Mrs. 
Mandel  as  authority  on  the  spelling.  Christine 
dreaded  her  authority  on  other  points,  but  Mela 
said  she  knew  she  would  not  interfere,  and  she 
undertook  to  get  round  her.  Mrs.  Mandel  pro- 
nounced the  spelling  bad,  and  the  taste  worse; 
she  forbade  them  to  send  the  letter;  and  Mela 
failed  to  get  round  her,  though  she  threatened,  if 
Mrs.  Mandel  would  not  tell  her  how  to  spell  the 
wrong  words,  that  she  would  send  the  letter  as  it 
was;  then  Mrs.  Mandel  said  that  if  Mr.  Beaton 
appeared  in  Saratoga  she  would  instantly  take 
them  both  home.  When  Mela  reported  this  re- 
sult, Christine  accused  her  of  having  mismanaged 
the  whole  business;  she  quarrelled  with  her,  and 
they  called  each  other  names.  Christine  declared 


86  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

that  she  would  not  stay  in  Saratoga,  and  that  if 
Mrs.  Mandel  did  not  go  back  to  New  York  with  her 
she  should  go  alone.  They  returned  the  first  week 
in  September ;  but  by  that  time  Beaton  had  gone  to 
see  his  people  in  Syracuse. 

Conrad  Dryfoos  remained  at  home  with  his 
mother  after  his  father  went  West.  He  had  already 
taken  such  a  vacation  as  he  had  been  willing  to 
allow  himself,  and  had  spent  it  on  a  charity  farm 
near  the  city,  where  the  fathers  with  whom  he 
worked  among  the  poor  on  the  East  side  in  the 
winter  had  sent  some  of  their  wards  for  the 
summer.  It  was  not  possible  to  keep  his  recrea- 
tion a  secret  at  the  office,  and  Fulkerson  found  a 
pleasure  in  figuring  the  jolly  time  Brother  Conrad 
must  have  teaching  farm  work  among  those  paupers 
and  potential  reprobates.  He  invented  details  of 
his  experience  among  them,  and  March  could  not 
always  help  joining  in  the  laugh  at  Conrad's 
humourless  helplessness  under  Fulkerson's  bur- 
lesque denunciation  of  a  summer  outing  spent  in 
such  dissipation. 

They  had  time  for  a  great  deal  of  joking  at  the 
office  during  the  season  of  leisure  which  penetrates 
in  August  to  the  very  heart  of  business,  and  they 
all  got  on  terms  of  greater  intimacy  if  not  greater 
friendliness  than  before.  Fulkerson  had  not  had  so 
long  to  do  with  the  advertising  side  of  human  nature 
without  developing  a  vein  of  cynicism,  of  no  great 
depth,  perhaps,  but  broad,  and  underlying  his  whole 
point  of  view ;  he  made  light  of  Beaton's  solemnity, 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  87 

as  he  made  light  of  Conrad's  'humanity.  The  art 
editor,  with  abundant  sarcasm,  had  no  more  humour 
than  the  publisher,  and  was  an  easy  prey  in  the 
manager's  hands ;  but  when  he  had  been  led  on  by 
Fulkerson's  flatteries  to  make  some  betrayal  of  ego- 
tism, he  brooded  over  it  till  he  had  thought  how  to 
revenge  himself  in  elaborate  insult.  For  Beaton's 
talent  Fulkerson  never  lost  his  admiration ;  but  his 
joke  was  to  encourage  him  to  give  himself  airs  of 
being  the  sole  source  of  the  magazine's  prosperity. 
No  bait  of  this  sort  was  too  obvious  for  Beaton  to 
swallow ;  he  could  be  caught  with  it  as  often  as  Ful- 
kerson chose;  though  he  was  ordinarily  suspicious 
as  to  the  motives  of  people  in  saying  things.  With 
March  he  got  on  no  better  than  at  first.  He  seemed 
to  be  lying  in  wait  for  some  encroachment  of  the 
literary  department  on  the  art  department,  and  he 
met  it  now  and  then  with  anticipative  reprisal. 
After  these  rebuffs,  the  editor  delivered  him  over 
to  the  manager,  who  could  turn  Beaton's  contrary- 
mindedness  to  account  by  asking  the  reverse  of 
what  he  really  wanted  done.  This  was  what 
Fulkerson  said ;  the  fact  was  that  he  did  get 
on  with  Beaton;  and  March  contented  himself 
with  musing  upon  the  contradictions  of  a  charac- 
ter at  once  so  vain  and  so  offensive,  so  fickle  and 
so  sullen,  so  conscious  and  so  simple. 

After  the  first  jarring  contact  with  Dryfoos,  the 
editor  ceased  to  feel  the  disagreeable  fact  of  the  old 
man's  mastery  of  the  financial  situation.  None 
of  the  chances  which  might  have  made  it  painful 


S8  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

occurred ;  the  control  of  the  whole  affair  remained 
in  Fulkerson's  hands ;  before  he  went  West  again, 
Dryfoos  had  ceased  to  come  about  the  office,  as  if, 
having  once  worn  off  the  novelty  of  the  sense  of 
owning  a  literary  periodical,  he  was  no  longer  in- 
terested in  it. 

Yet  it  was  a  relief,  somehow,  when  he  left  town, 
which  he  did  not  do  without  coming  to  take  a 
formal  leave  of  the  editor  at  his  office.  He  seemed 
willing  to  leave  March  with  a  better  impression 
than  he  had  hitherto  troubled  himself  to  make  ;  he 
even  said  some  civil  things  about  the  magazine,  as 
if  its  success  pleased  him ;  and  he  spoke  openly  to 
March  of  his  hope  that  his  son  would  finally  become 
interested  in  it  to  the  exclusion  of  the  hopes  and 
purposes  which  divided  them.  It  seemed  to  March 
that  in  the  old  man's  warped  and  toughened  heart 
he  perceived  a  disappointed  love  for  his  son  greater 
than  for  his  other  children  ;  but  this  might  have 
been  fancy.  Lindau  came  in  with  some  copy  while 
Dryfoos  was  there,  and  March  introduced  them. 
When  Lindau  went  out,  March  explained  to  Dryfoos 
that  he  had  lost  his  hand  in  the  war ;  and  he  told 
him  something  of  Lindau's  career  as  he  had  known 
it.  Dryfoos  appeared  greatly  pleased  that  Every 
Other  Week  was  giving  Lindau  work.  He  said  that 
he  had  helped  to  enlist  a  good  many  fellows  for  the 
war,  and  had  paid  money  to  fill  up  the  Moffitt 
County  quota  under  the  later  calls  for  troops.  He 
had  never  been  an  Abolitionist,  but  he  had  joined 
the  Anti-Nebraska  party  in  '55,  and  he  had  voted 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  89 

for   Fremont  and  for  every  Republican   President 
since  then. 

At  his  own  house  March  saw  more  of  Lindau 
than  of  any  other  contributor,  but  the  old  man 
seemed  to  think  that  he  must  transact  all  his  busi- 
ness with  March  at  his  place  of  business.  The 
transaction  had  some  peculiarities  which  perhaps 
made  this  necessary.  Lindau  always  expected  to 
receive  his  money  when  he  brought  his  copy,  as  an 
acknowledgment  of  the  immediate  right  of  the 
labourer  to  his  hire  ;  and  he  would  not  take  it  in  a 
cheque  because  he  did  not  approve  of  banks,  and 
regarded  the  whole  system  of  banking  as  the  capi- 
talistic manipulation  of  the  people's  money.  He 
would  receive  his  pay  only  from  March's  hand, 
because  he  wished  to  be  understood  as  working  for 
him,  and  honestly  earning  money  honestly  earned  ; 
and  sometimes  March  inwardly  winced  a  little  at 
letting  the  old  man  share  the  increase  of  capital  won 
by  such  speculation  as  Dryfoos's,  but  he  shook  off 
the  feeling.  As  the  summer  advanced,  and  the 
artists  and  classes  that  employed  Lindau  as  a  model 
left  town  one  after  another,  he  gave  largely  of  his 
increasing  leisure  to  the  people  in  the  office  of  Every 
Other  Week.  It  was  pleasant  for  March  to  see  the 
respect  with  which  Conrad  Dryfoos  always  used 
him,  for  the  sake  of  his  wound  and  his  grey  beard. 
There  was  something  delicate  and  fine  in  it,  and 
there  was  nothing  unkindly  on  Fulkerson's  part  in 
the  hostilities  which  usually  passed  between  him 
and  Lindau.  Fulkerson  bore  himself  reverently  at 


90  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

times  too,  but  it  was  not  in  him  to  keep  that  up, 
especially  when  Lindau  appeared  with  more  beer 
aboard  than,  as  Fulkerson  said,  he  could  manage 
ship-shape.  On  these  occasions  Fulkerson  always 
tried  to  start  him  on  the  theme  of  the  unduly  rich ; 
he  made  himself  the  champion  of  monopolies,  and 
enjoyed  the  invectives  which  Lindau  heaped  upon 
him  as  a  slave  of  capital ;  he  said  that  it  did  him 
good. 

One  day,  with  the  usual  show  of  writhing  under 
Lindau's  scorn,  he  said,  "  Well,  I  understand  that 
although  you  despise  me  now,  Lindau — 

"  I  ton't  desbise  you,"  the  old  man  broke  in,  his 
nostrils  swelling  and  his  eyes  naming  with  excite- 
ment, "I  bity  you." 

"  Well,  it  seems  to  come  to  the  same  thing  in  the 
end,"  said  Fulkerson.  "  What  I  understand  is  that 
you  pity  me  now  as  the  slave  of  capital,  but  you 
would  pity  me  a  great  deal  more  if  I  was  the  master 
of  it." 

"  How  you  mean  ? " 

"  If  I  was  rich." 

"  That  would  tebendt,"  said  Lindau,  trying  to 
control  himself.  "If  you  hat  inheritedt  your 
money,  you  might  pe  innocent ;  but  if  you  hat  mate 
it,  efery  man  that  resbectedt  himself  would  haf  to 
ask  how  you  mate  it,  and  if  you  hat  mate  moch, 
he  would  know " 

"  Hold  on ;  hold  on,  now,  Lindau !  Ain't  that 
rather  un-American  doctrine  1  We're  all  brought 
up,  ain't  we,  to  honour  the  man  that  made  his 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  91 

money,  and  look  down — or  try  to  look  down  ;  some- 
times it 's  difficult — on  the  fellow  that  his  father  left 
it  to  ? " 

The  old  man  rose  and  struck  his  breast.  "On- 
Amerigan ! "  he  roared,  and,  as  he  Avent  on,  his 
accent  grew  more  and  more  uncertain.  "  What  iss 
Amerigan  1  Dere  iss  no  Ameriga  any  more  !  You 
start  here  free  and  brafe,  and  you  glaim  for  efery 
man  de  righdt  to  life,  liperty,  and  de  bursuit  of 
habbiness.  And  where  haf  you  entedt?  No  man 
that  vorks  vith  his  handts  among  you  hass  the 
liperty  to  bursue  his  habbiness.  He  iss  the  slafe  of 
some  richer  man,  some  gompany,  some  gorporation, 
dat  crindts  him  down  to  the  least  he  can  lif  on,  and 
that  rops  him  of  the  marchin  of  his  earnings  that  he 
might  pe  habby  on.  Oh,  you  Amerigans,  you  haf 
cot  it  down  goldt,  as  you  say  !  You  ton't  puy  foters; 
you  puy  lechislatures  and  goncressmen ;  you  puy 
gourts;  you  puy  gombetitors;  you  pay  infentors 
not  to  infent ;  you  atfertise,  and  the  gounting-room 
sees  dat  de  etitorial-room  toesn't  tink." 

"  Yes,  we  Ve  got  a  little  arrangement  of  that  sort 
with  March  here,"  said  Fulkerson. 

"  Oh,  I  am  sawry,"  said  the  old  man  contritely, 
"  I  meant  noting  bersonaL  I  ton't  tink  we  are  all 
cuilty  or  gorrubt,  and  efen  among  the  rich  there  are 
goodt  men.  But  gabidal " — his  passion  rose  again — 
"  where  you  find  gabidal,  millions  of  money  that  a 
man  hass  cot  togeder  in  fife,  ten,  tventy  years,  you 
findt  the  smell  of  tears  and  ploodt !  Dat  iss  what  I 
say.  And  you  cot  to  loog  oudt  for  yourself  when 


92  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

you  meet  a  rich  man  whether  you  meet  an  honest 
man." 

"  "Well,"  said  Fulkerson,  "  I  wish  I  was  a  subject 
of  suspicion  with  you,  Lindau.  By  the  way,"  he 
added,  "  I  understand  that  you  think  capital  was  at 
the  bottom  of  the  veto  of  that  pension  of  yours." 

"What  bension?  What  feto  ?  "  The  old  man 
flamed  up  again.  "  No  bension  of  mine  was  efer 
fetoedt.  I  renounce  my  bension,  begause  I  would 
sgorn  to  dake  money  from  a  gofernment  that  I  ton't 
peliefe  in  any  more.  Where  you  hear  that  story  ? " 

"Well,  I  don't  know,"  said  Fulkerson,  rather 
embarrassed.  "It's  common  talk." 

"  It 's  a  gommon  lie,  then !  When  the  time 
gome  dat  dis  iss  a  free  gountry  again,  then  I  dalfe  a 
bension  again  for  my  woundts  ;  but  I  would  sdarfe 
before  I  dake  a  bension  now  from  a  rebublic  dat  is 
bought  oap  by  monobolies,  and  ron  by  drusts  and 
gompanies,  and  railroadts  andt  oil  gompanies. 

"  Look  out,  Lindau,"  said  Fulkerson.  "  You  bite 
yourself  mit  dat  dog  some  day."  But  when  the 
old  man,  with  a  ferocious  gesture  of  renunciation, 
whirled  out  of  the  place,  he  added :  "  I  guess  I  went 
a  little  too  far  that  time.  I  touched  him  on  a  sore 
place ;  I  didn't  mean  to ;  I  heard  some  talk  about 
his  pension  being  vetoed  from  Miss  Leighton."  He 
addressed  these  exculpations  to  March's  grave  face, 
and  to  the  pitying  deprecation  in  the  eyes  of  Conrad 
Dryfoos,  whom  Lindau's  roaring  wrath  had  sum- 
moned to  the  door.  "But  I'll  make  it  all  right 
with  him  the  next  time  he  comes.  I  didn't  know 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  93 

he  was  loaded,  or  I  wouldn't  have  monkeyed  with 
him." 

"  Lindau  does  himself  injustice  when  he  gets  to 
talking  in  that  way,"  said  March.  "  I  hate  to  hear 
him.  He 's  as  good  an  American  as  any  of  us  ;  and 
it 's  only  because  he  has  too  high  an  ideal  of  us " 

"  Oh,  go  on  !  Eub  it  in — rub  it  in  !  "  cried  Ful- 
kerson, clutching  his  hair  in  suffering,  which  was 
not  altogether  burlesque.  "  How  did  I  know  he 
had  renounced  his  '  bension '  1  Why  didn't  you 
tell  me  1 " 

"  I  didn't  know  it  myself.  I  only  knew  that  he 
had  none,  and  I  didn't  ask,  for  I  had  a  notion  that 
it  might  be  a  painful  subject." 

Fulkerson  tried  to  turn  it  off  lightly.  "  "Well, 
he  's  a  noble  old  fellow ;  pity  he  drinks."  March 
would  not  smile,  and  Fulkerson  broke  out :  "  Dog 
on  it !  I  '11  make  it  up  to  the  old  fool  the  next  time 
he  comes.  I  don't  like  that  dynamite  talk  of  his ; 
but  any  man  that 's  given  his  hand  to  the  country  has 
got  mine  in  his  grip  for  good.  Why,  March  !  You 
don't  suppose  I  wanted  to  hurt  his  feelings,  do  you?" 

"  Why,  of  course  not,  Fulkerson." 

But  they  could  not  get  away  from  a  certain 
ruefulness  for  that  time,  and  in  the  evening  Fulker- 
son came  round  to  March's  to  say  that  he  had  got 
Lindau's  address  from  Conrad,  and  had  looked 
him  up  at  his  lodgings. 

"  Well,  there  isn't  so  much  bric-a-brac  there,  quite, 
as  Mrs.  Green  left  you ;  but  I  've  made  it  all  right 
with  Lindau,  as  far  as  I  'm  concerned.  I  told  him  I 


94  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

didn't  know  when  I  spoke  that  way,  and  I  honoured 
him  for  sticking  to  his  { brincibles ' ;  /  don't  believe 
in  his  brincibles ;  and  we  wept  on  each  other's  necks 
— al  least,  he  did.  Dogged  if  he  didn't  kiss  me 
before  I  knew  what  he  was  up  to.  He  said  I  was 
his  chenerous  yong  friendt,  and  he  begged  my 
barton  if  he  had  said  anything  to  wound  me.  I  tell 
you  it  was  an  affecting  scene,  March;  and  rats 
enough  round  in  that  old  barracks  where  he  lives  to 
fit  out  a  first-class  case  of  delirium  tremens.  What 
does  he  stay  there  for  ?  He 's  not  obliged  to  ? " 

Lindau's  reasons,  as  March  repeated  them,  affected 
Fulkerson  as  deliciously  comical ;  but  after  that  he 
confined  his  pleasantries  at  the  office  to  Beaton  and 
Conrad  Dryfoos,  or,  as  he  said,  he  spent  the  rest  of 
the  summer  in  keeping  Lindau  smoothed  up. 

It  is  doubtful  if  Lindau  altogether  liked  this  as 
well.  Perhaps  he  missed  the  occasions  Fulkerson 
used  to  give  him  of  bursting  out  against  the  mil- 
lionaires ;  and  he  could  not  well  go  on  denouncing  as 
the  slafe  of  gabidal  a  man  who  had  behaved  to  him 
as  Fulkerson  had  done,  though  Fulkerson's  servile 
relations  to  capital  had  been  in  nowise  changed  by 
his  nople  gonduct. 

Their  relations  continued  to  Avear  this  irksome 
character  of  mutual  forbearance ;  and  when  Dry- 
foos returned  in  October  and  Fulkerson  revived  the 
question  of  that  dinner  in  celebration  of  the  success 
of  Every  Other  Week,  he  carried  his  complaisance  to 
an  extreme  that  alarmed  March  for  the  consequences. 


V. 


"  You  see,"  Fulkerson  explained,  "  I  find  that  the 
old  man  has  got  an  idea  of  his  own  about  that 
banquet,  and  I  guess  there 's  some  sense  in  it.  He 
wants  to  have  a  preliminary  little  dinner,  where  we 
can  talk  the  thing  up  first — half  a  dozen  of  us ;  and 
he  wants  to  give  us  the  dinner  at  his  house.  Well, 
that  Js  no  harm.  I  don't  believe  the  old  man  ever 
gave  a  dinner,  and  he  'd  like  to  show  off  a  little ; 
there  's  a  good  deal  of  human  nature  in  the  old  man, 
after  all.  He  thought  of  you,  of  course,  and  Colonel 
"Woodburn,  and  Beaton,  and  me  at  the  foot  of  the 
table ;  and  Conrad ;  and  I  suggested  Kendricks : 
he 's  such  a  nice  little  chap ;  and  the  old  man  him- 
self brought  up  the  idea  of  Lindau.  He  said  you 
told  him  something  about  him,  and  he  asked  why 
couldn't  we  have  him,  too;  and  I  jumped  at  it." 

"  Have  Lindau  to  dinner  1 "  asked  March. 

"  Certainly ;  why  not  1  Father  Dryfoos  has  a 
notion  of  paying  the  old  fellow  a  compliment  for 
what  he  done  for  the  country.  There  won't  be  any 
trouble  about  it.  You  can  sit  alongside  of  him,  and 
cut  up  his  meat  for  him,  and  help  him  to  things " 

"  Yes,  but   it   won't  do,  Fulkerson !     I  don't  be- 


96  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

lieve  Lindau  ever  had  on  a  dress-coat  in  his  life, 
and  I  don't  believe  his  'brincibles'  would  let  him 
wear  one." 

"Well,  neither  had  Dryfoos,  for  the  matter  of 
that.  He's  as  high-principled  as  old  Pan-Electric 
himself,  when  it  comes  to  a  dress-coat,"  said  Ful- 
kerson.  "  We  're  all  going  to  go  in  business  dress ; 
the  old  man  stipulated  for  that." 

"It  isn't  the  dress-coat  alone,"  March  resumed. 
"  Lindau  and  Dryfoos  wouldn't  get  on.  You  know 
they  're  opposite  poles  in  everything.  You  mustn't 
do  it.  Dryfoos  will  be  sure  to  say  something  to 
outrage  Lindau's  '  brincibles,'  and  there  '11  be  an  ex- 
plosion. It's  all  well  enough  for  Dryfoos  to  feel 
grateful  to  Lindau,  and  his  wish  to  honour  him 
does  him  credit ;  but  to  have  Lindau  to  dinner 
isn't  the  way.  At  the  best,  the  old  fellow  would 
be  very  unhappy  in  such  a  house ;  he  would  have  a 
bad  conscience ;  and  I  should  be  sorry  to  have  him 
feel  that  he  'd  been  recreant  to  his  '  brincibles ' ; 
they  're  about  all  he 's  got,  and  whatever  we  think 
of  them,  we're  bound  to  respect  his  fidelity  to 
them."  March  warmed  toward  Lindau  in  taking 
this  view  of  him.  "I  should  feel  ashamed  if  I 
didn't  protest  against  his  being  put  in  a  false  posi- 
tion. After  all,  he 's  my  old  friend,  and  I  shouldn't 
like  to  have  him  do  himself  injustice  if  he  is  a 
crank." 

"  Of  course,"  said  Fulkerson,  with  some  trouble  in 
his  face.  "I  appreciate  your  feeling.  But  there 
ain't  any  danger,"  he  added  buoyantly.  "  Anyhow, 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  97 

you  spoke  too  late,  as  the  Irishman  said  to  the 
chicken  when  he  swallowed  him  in  a  fresh  egg. 
I  've  asked  Lindau,  and  he  's  accepted  with  blayzure; 
that 's  what  he  says." 

March  made  no  other  comment  than  a  shrug. 

"You'll  see,"  Fulkerson  continued,  "it'll  go  off 
all  right.  I  '11  engage  to  make  it,  and  I  won't  hold 
anybody  else  responsible." 

Jn  the  course  of  his  married  life  March  had 
learned  not  to  censure  the  irretrievable;  but  this 
was  just  what  his  wife  had  not  learned ;  and  she 
poured  out  so  much  astonishment  at  what  Fulker- 
son had  done,  and  so  much  disapproval,  that  March 
began  to  palliate  the  situation  a  little. 

"After  all,  it  isn't  a  question  of  life  and  death; 
and,  if  it  were,  I  don't  see  how  it's  to  be  helped 
now." 

"  Oh,  it 's  not  to  be  helped  now.  But  I  am  sur- 
prised at  Mr.  Fulkerson." 

"Well,  Fulkerson  has  his  moments  of  being 
merely  human,  too." 

Mrs.  March  would  not  deign  a  direct  defence  of 
her  favourite.  "  Well,  I  'm  glad  there  are  not  to  be 
ladies." 

"I  don't  know.  Dryfoos  thought  of  having 
ladies,  but  it  seems  your  infallible  Fulkerson  over- 
ruled him.  Their  presence  might  have  kept  Lindau 
and  our  host  in  bounds." 

It  had  become  part  of  the  Marches'  conjugal  joke 
for  him  to  pretend  that  she  could  allow  nothing 
wrong  in  Fulkerson,  and  he  now  laughed  with  a 
VOL.  II.— 5 


98  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

mocking  air  of  having  expected  it  when  she  said  : 
"  Well,  then,  if  Mr.  Fulkerson  says  he  will  see  that 
it  all  comes  out  right,  I  suppose  you  must  trust  his 
tact.  I  wouldn't  trust  yours,  Basil.  The  first  wrong 
step  was  taken  when  Mr.  Lindau  was  asked  to  help 
on  the  magazine." 

"  Well,  it  was  your  infallible  Fulkerson  that  took 
the  step,  or  at  least  suggested  it.  I  'm  happy  to  say 
/had  totally  forgotten  my  early  friend." 

Mrs.  March  was  daunted  and  silenced  for  a 
moment.  Then  she  said  :  "  Oh,  pshaw  !  You 
know  well  enough  he  did  it  to  please  you." 

"  I  'm  very  glad  he  didn't  do  it  to  please  yout 
Isabel,"  said  her  husband,  with  affected  seriousness. 
"Though  perhaps  he  did." 

He  began  to  look  at  the  humorous  aspect  of  the 
affair,  which  it  certainly  had,  and  to  comment  on 
the  singular  incongruities  which  Every  Other  Week 
was  destined  to  involve  at  every  moment  of  its 
career.  "  I  wonder  if  I  'm  mistaken  in  supposing 
that  no  other  periodical  was  ever  like  it.  Perhaps 
all  periodicals  are  like  it.  But  I  don't  believe 
there 's  another  publication  in  New  York  that  could 
bring  together,  in  honour  of  itself,  a  fraternity  and 
equality  crank  like  poor  old  Lindau,  and  a  belated 
sociological  crank  like  Woodburn,  and  a  truculent 
speculator  like  old  Dryfoos,  and  a  humanitarian 
dreamer  like  young  Dryfoos,  and  a  sentimentalist 
like  me,  and  a  nondescript  like  Beaton,  and  a  pure 
advertising  essence  like  Fulkerson,  and  a  society 
spirit  like  Kendricks.  If  we  could  only  allow  on» 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  99 

another  to  talk  uninterruptedly  all  the  time,  the 
dinner  would  be  the  greatest  success  in  the  world, 
and  we  should  come  home  full  of  the  highest  mutual 
respect.  But  I  suspect  we  can't  manage  that — even 
your  infallible  Fulkerson  couldn't  work  it — and  I  'm 
afraid  that  there'll  be  some  listening  that'll  spoil 
the  pleasure  of  the  time." 

March  was  so  well  pleased  with  this  view  of  the 
case  that  he  suggested  the  idea  involved  to  Fulker- 
son. Fulkerson  was  too  good  a  fellow  not  to  laugh 
at  another  man's  joke,  but  he  laughed  a  little  rue- 
fully, and  he  seemed  worn  with  more  than  one  kind 
of  care  in  the  interval  that  passed  between  the 
present  time  and  the  night  of  the  dinner. 

Dryfoos  necessarily  depended  upon  him  for 
advice  concerning  the  scope  and  nature  of  the 
dinner,  but  he  received  the  advice  suspiciously,  and 
contested  points  of  obvious  propriety  with  per- 
tinacious stupidity.  Fulkerson  said  that  when  it 
came  to  the  point  he  would  rather  have  had  the 
thing,  as  he  called  it,  at  Delmonico's  or  some  other 
restaurant ;  but  when  he  found  that  Dryfoos's  pride 
was  bound  up  in  having  it  at  his  own  house,  he  gave 
way  to  him.  Dryfoos  also  wanted  his  woman-cook 
to  prepare  the  dinner,  but  Fulkerson  persuaded  him 
that  this  would  not  do;  he  must  have  it  from  a 
caterer.  Then  Dryfoos  wanted  his  maids  to  wait  at 
table,  but  Fulkerson  convinced  him  that  this  would 
be  incongruous  at  a  man's  dinner.  It  was  decided 
that  the  dinner  should  be  sent  in  from  Frescobaldi's, 
and  Dryfoos  went  with  Fulkerson  to  discuss  it  with 
2F 


100       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

the  caterer.  He  insisted  upon  having  everything 
explained  to  him,  and  the  reason  for  having  it,  and 
not  something  else  in  its  place;  and  he  treated 
Fulkerson  and  Frescobaldi  as  if  they  were  in  league 
to  impose  upon  him.  There  were  moments  when 
Fulkerson  saw  the  varnish  of  professional  politeness 
cracking  on  the  Neapolitan's  volcanic  surface,  and 
caught  a  glimpse  of  the  lava  fires  of  the  cook's 
nature  beneath ;  he  trembled  for  Dryfoos,  who  was 
walking  rough-shod  over  him  in  the  security  of  an 
American  who  had  known  how  to  make  his  money, 
and  must  know  how  to  spend  it ;  but  he  got  him 
safely  away  at  last,  and  gave  Frescobaldi  a  wink  of 
sympathy  for  his  shrug  of  exhaustion  as  they  turned 
to  leave  him. 

It  was  at  first  a  relief  and  then  an  anxiety  with 
Fulkerson  that  Lindau  did  not  come  about  after 
accepting  the  invitation  to  dinner,  until  he  appeared 
at  Dryfoos's  house,  prompt  to  the  hour.  There  was, 
to  be  sure,  nothing  to  bring  him ;  but  Fulkerson 
was  uneasily  aware  that  Dryfoos  expected  to  meet 
him  at  the  office,  and  perhaps  receive  some  verbid 
acknowledgment  of  the  honour  done  him.  Dryfoos, 
he  could  see,  thought  he  was  doing  all  his  invited 
guests  a  favour ;  and  while  he  stood  in  a  certain  awe 
of  them  as  people  of  much  greater  social  experience 
than  himself,  regarded  them  with  a  kind  of  con- 
tempt, as  people  who  were  going  to  have  a  better 
dinner  at  his  house  than  they  could  ever  afford  to 
have  at  their  own.  He  had  finally  not  spared  ex- 
pense upon  it;  after  pushing  Frescobaldi  to  tho 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        101 

point  of  eruption  with  his  misgivings  and  suspicions 
at  the  first  interview,  he  had  gone  to  him  a  second 
time  alone,  and  told  him  not  to  let  the  money  stand 
between  him  and  anything  he  would  like  to  do.  In 
the  absence  of  Frescobaldi's  fellow-conspirator  he 
restored  himself  in  the  caterer's  esteem  by  adding 
whatever  he  suggested  ;  and  Fulkerson,  after  trem- 
bling for  the  old  man's  niggardliness,  was  now  afraid 
of  a  fantastic  profusion  in  the  feast.  Dryfoos  had 
reduced  the  scale  of  the  banquet  as  regarded  the 
number  of  guests,  but  a  confusing  remembrance  of 
what  Fulkerson  had  wished  to  do  remained  with 
him  in  part,  and  up  to  the  day  of  the  dinner  he 
dropped  in  at  Frescobaldi's  and  ordered  more  dishes 
and  more  of  them.  He  impressed  the  Italian  as  an 
American  original  of  a  novel  kind ;  and  when  he 
asked  Fulkerson  how  Dryfoos  had  made  his  money, 
and  learned  that  it  was  primarily  in  natural  gas,  he 
made  note  of  some  of  his  eccentric  tastes  as  pecu- 
liarities that  were  to  be  caressed  in  any  future 
natural-gas  millionaire  who  might  fall  into  his 
hands.  He  did  not  begrudge  the  time  he  had  to 
give  in  explaining  to  Dryfoos  the  relation  of  the 
different  wines  to  the  different  dishes;  Dryfoos 
was  apt  to  substitute  a  costlier  wine  where  he 
could  for  a  cheaper  one,  and  he  gave  Frescobaldi 
carte  blanche  for  the  decoration  of  the  table  with 
pieces  of  artistic  confectionery.  Among  these  the 
caterer  designed  one  for  a  surprise  to  his  patron 
and  a  delicate  recognition  of  the  source  of  his 
wealth,  which  he  found  Dryfoos  very  willing  to 


102  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

talk  about,  when  he  intimated  that  he  knew  what 
it  was. 

Dryfoos  left  it  to  Fulkerson  to  invite  the  guests, 
and  he  found  ready  acceptance  of  his  politeness  from 
Kendricks,  who  rightly  regarded  the  dinner  as  a 
part  of  the  Every  Other  Week  business,  and  was  too 
sweet  and  kind-hearted,  anyway,  not  to  seem  very 
glad  to  come.  March  was  a  matter  of  course ;  but 
in  Colonel  Woodburn  Fulkerson  encountered  a  re- 
luctance which  embarrassed  him  the  more  because 
he  was  conscious  of  having,  for  motives  of  his  own, 
rather  strained  a  point  in  suggesting  the  colonel  to 
Dryfoos  as  a  fit  subject  for  invitation.  There  had 
been  only  one  of  the  colonel's  articles  printed  as 
yet,  and  though  it  had  made  a  sensation  in  its  way, 
and  started  the  talk  about  that  number,  still  it  did 
not  fairly  constitute  him  a  member  of  the  staff,  or 
even  entitle  him  to  recognition  as  a  regular  con- 
tributor. Fulkerson  felt  so  sure  of  pleasing  him 
with  Dryfoos's  message  that  he  delivered  it  in  full 
family  council  at  the  widow's.  His  daughter  re- 
ceived it  with  all  the  enthusiasm  that  Fulkerson  had 
hoped  for,  but  the  colonel  said  stiffly,  "  I  have  not 
the  pleasure  of  knowing  Mr.  Dryfoos."  Miss  Wood- 
burn  appeared  ready  to  fall  upon  him  at  this,  but 
controlled  herself,  as  if  aware  that  filial  authority 
had  its  limits,  and  pressed  her  lips  together  without 
saying  anything. 

'  Yes,  I  know,"  Fulkerson  admitted.  "  But  it 
isn't  a  usual  case.  Mr.  Dryfoos  don't  go  in  much 
for  the  conventionalities;  I  reckon  he  don't  know 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        103 

much  about  'em,  come  to  boil  it  down;  and  he 
hoped" — here  Fulkerson  felt  the  necessity  of  in- 
venting a  little — "  that  you  would  excuse  any  want 
of  ceremony ;  it 's  to  be  such  an  informal  affair,  any- 
way ;  we  're  all  going  in  business  dress,  and  there 
ain't  going  to  be  any  ladies.  He  'd  have  come 
himself  to  ask  you,  but  he 's  a  kind  of  a  bashful  old 
fellow.  It 's  all  right,  Colonel  Woodburn." 

"  I  take  it  that  it  is,  sir,"  said  the  colonel  cour- 
teously, but  with  unabated  state,  "  coming  from  you. 
But  in  these  matters  we  have  no  right  to  burden 
our  friends  with  our  decisions." 

"  Of  course,  of  course,"  said  Fulkerson,  feeling 
that  he  had  been  delicately  told  to  mind  his  own 
business. 

"  I  understand,"  the  colonel  went  on,  "  the  relation 
that  Mr.  Dryfoos  bears  to  the  periodical  in  which 
you  have  done  me  the  hono'  to  print  my  papah,  but 
this  is  a  question  of  passing  the  bounds  of  a  purely 
business  connection,  and  of  eating  the  salt  of  a  man 
whom  you  do  not  definitely  know  to  be  a  gentle- 
man." 

" Mah  goodness  ! "  his  daughter  broke  in.  "If 
you  bah  your  own  salt  with  his  money " 

"It  is  supposed  that  I  earn  his  money  before  I 
buy  my  salt  with  it,"  returned  her  father  severely. 
"  And  in  these  times,  when  money  is  got  in  heaps, 
through  the  natural  decay  of  our  nefarious  com- 
mercialism, it  behooves  a  gentleman  to  be  scrupulous 
that  the  hospitality  offered  him  is  not  the  profusion 
of  a  thief  with  his  booty.  I  don't  say  that  Mr. 


104  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

Dryfoos's  good-fortune  is  not  honest.  I  simply  say 
that  I  know  nothing  about  it,  and  that  I  should 
prefer  to  know  something  before  I  sat  down  at  his 
board." 

"  You  're  all  right,  colonel,"  said  Fulkerson,  "  and 
so  is  Mr.  Dryfoos.  I  give  you  my  word  that  there 
are  no  flies  on  his  personal  integrity,  if  that's  what 
you  mean.  He 's  hard,  and  he  'd  push  an  advantage, 
but  I  don't  believe  he  would  take  an  unfair  one. 
He 's  speculated  and  made  money  every  time,  but  I 
never  heard  of  his  wrecking  a  railroad  or  belonging 
to  any  swindling  company  or  any  grinding  monopoly. 
He  does  chance  it  in  stocks,  but  he 's  always  played 
on  the  square,  if  you  call  stocks  gambling." 

"  May  I  think  this  over  till  morning  1  "  asked  the 
colonel. 

"  Oh,  certainly,  certainly,"  said  Fulkerson  eagerly. 
"I  don't  know  as  there's  any  hurry." 

Miss  Woodburn  found  a  chance  to  murmur  to 
him  before  he  went :  "  He  '11  come.  And  Ah  'm  so 
much  oblahged,  Mr.  Fulkerson.  Ah  jost  know  it 's 
all  you'  doing,  and  it  will  give  papa  a  chance  to  toak 
to  some  new  people,  and  get  away  from  us  evahlastin' 
women  for  once." 

"  I  don't  see  why  any  one  should  want  to  do  that," 
said  Fulkerson,  with  grateful  gallantry.  "But  I '11 
be  dogged,"  he  said  to  March  when  he  told  him 
about  this  odd  experience,  "  if  I  ever  expected  to 
find  Colonel  Woodburn  on  old  Lindau's  ground. 
He  did  come  round  handsomely  this  morning  at 
breakfast  and  apologised  for  taking  time  to  think 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        105 

the  invitation  over  before  he  accepted.  '  You  under- 
stand,' he  says,  '  that  if  it  had  been  to  the  table  of 
some  friend  not  so  prosperous  as  Mr.  Dryfoos — 
your  friend  Mr.  March,  for  instance — it  would  have 
been  sufficient  to  know  that  he  was  your  friend. 
But  in  these  days  it  is  a  duty  that  a  gentleman 
owes  himself  to  consider  whether  he  wishes  to  know 
a  rich  man  or  not.  The  chances  of  making  money 
disreputably  are  so  great  that  the  chances  are  against 
a  man  who  has  made  money  if  he 's  made  a  great 
deal  of  it.'" 

March  listened  with  a  face  of  ironical  insinuation. 
"  That  was  very  good  ;  and  he  seems  to  have  had  a 
good  deal  of  confidence  in  your  patience  and  in  your 
sense  of  his  importance  to  the  occasion " 

"  No,  no,"  Fulkerson  protested,  "  there 's  none  of 
that  kind  of  thing  about  the  colonel.  I  told  him  to 
take  time  to  think  it  over ;  he 's  the  simplest-hearted 
old  fellow  in  the  world." 

"I  should  say  so.  After  all,  he  didn't  give  any 
reason  he  had  for  accepting.  But  perhaps  the  young 
lady  had  the  reason." 

"  Pshaw,  March  ! "  said  Fulkerson. 
5* 


VI. 


So  far  as  the  Dryfoos  family  was  concerned,  the 
dinner  might  as  well  have  been  given  at  Frescobaldi's 
rooms.  None  of  the  ladies  appeared.  Mrs.  Dryfoos 
was  glad  to  escape  to  her  own  chamber,  where  she 
sat  before  an  autumnal  fire,  shaking  her  head  and 
talking  to  herself  at  times,  with  the  foreboding  of 
evil  which  old  women  like  her  make  part  of  their 
religion.  The  girls  stood  just  out  of  sight  at  the 
head  of  the  stairs,  and  disputed  which  guest  it  was 
at  each  arrival ;  Mrs.  Mandel  had  gone  to  her  room 
to  write  letters,  after  beseeching  them  not  to  stand 
there.  When  Kendricks  came,  Christine  gave  Mela 
a  little  pinch,  equivalent  to  a  little  mocking  shriek ; 
for,  on  the  ground  of  his  long  talk  with  Mela  at 
Mrs.  Horn's,  in  the  absence  of  any  other  admirer, 
they  based  a  superstition  of  his  interest  in  her; 
when  Beaton  came,  Mela  returned  the  pinch,  but 
awkwardly,  so  that  it  hurt,  and  then  Christine 
involuntarily  struck  her. 

Frescobaldi's  men  were  in  possession  everywhere : 
they  had  turned  the  cook  out  of  her  kitchen  and  the 
waitress  out  of  her  pantry ;  the  reluctant  Irishman 
at  the  door  was  supplemented  by  a  vivid  Italian, 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        107 

who  spoke  French  with  the  guests,  and  said,  "  Bien, 
Monsieur"  and  "  Toute  suite"  and  " Mercif "  to  all, 
as  he  took  their  hats  and  coats,  and  effused  a  hospi- 
tality that  needed  no  language  but  the  gleam  of  his 
eyes  and  teeth  and  the  play  of  his  eloquent  hands. 
From  his  professional  dress-coat,  lustrous  with  the 
grease  spotted  on  it  at  former  dinners  and  parties, 
they  passed  to  the  frocks  of  the  elder  and  younger 
Dryfoos  in  the  drawing-room,  which  assumed  infor- 
mality for  the  affair,  but  did  not  put  their  wearers 
wholly  at  their  ease.  The  father's  coat  was  of  black 
broadcloth,  and  he  wore  it  unbuttoned ;  the  skirts 
were  long,  and  the  sleeves  came  down  to  his  knuckles ; 
he  shook  hands  with  his  guests,  and  the  same  dry- 
ness  seemed  to  be  in  his  palm  and  throat,  as  he 
huskily  asked  each  to  take  a  chair.  Conrad's  coat 
was  of  modern  texture  and  cut,  and  was  buttoned 
about  him  as  if  it  concealed  a  bad  conscience 
within  its  lapels;  he  met  March  with  his  entreat- 
ing smile,  and  he  seemed  no  more  capable  of 
coping  with  the  situation  than  his  father.  They 
both  waited  for  Fulkerson,  who  went  about  and  did 
his  best  to  keep  life  in  the  party  during  the  half- 
hour  that  passed  before  they  sat  down  at  dinner. 
Beaton  stood  gloomily  aloof,  as  if  waiting  to  be 
approached  on  the  right  basis  before  yielding  an 
inch  of  his  ground;  Colonel  Woodburn,  awaiting 
the  moment  when  he  could  sally  out  on  his  hobby, 
kept  himself  intrenched  within  the  dignity  of  a 
gentleman,  and  examined  askance  the  figure  of  old 
Lindau  as  he  stared  about  the  room,  with  his  fine 


108  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

head  up,  and  his  empty  sleeve  dangling  over  his 
wrist.  March  felt  obliged  to  him  for  wearing  a  new 
coat  in  the  midst  of  that  hostile  luxury,  and  he  was 
glad  to  see  Dryfoos  make  up  to  him  and  begin  to 
talk  with  him,  as  if  he  wished  to  show  him  particular 
respect,  though  it  might  have  been  because  he  was 
less  afraid  of  him  than  of  the  others.  He  heard 
Lindau  saying,  "  Boat,  the  name  is  Choarman  ? " 
and  Dryfoos  beginning  to  explain  his  Pennsylvania 
Dutch  origin,  and  he  suffered  himself,  with  a  sigh 
of  relief,  to  fall  into  talk  with  Kendricks,  who  was 
always  pleasant ;  he  was  willing  to  talk  about  some- 
thing besides  himself,  and  had  no  opinions  that  he 
was  not  ready  to  hold  in  abeyance  for  the  time  being 
out  of  kindness  to  others.  In  that  group  of  impas- 
sioned individualities,  March  felt  him  a  refuge  and 
comfort— with  his  harmless  dilettante  intention  of 
some  day  writing  a  novel,  and  his  belief  that  he  was 
meantime  collecting  material  for  it. 

Fulkerson,  while  breaking  the  ice  for  the  whole 
company,  was  mainly  engaged  in  keeping  Colonel 
Woodburn  thawed  out.  He  took  Kendricks  away 
from  March  and  presented  him  to  the  Colonel  as  a 
person  Avho,  like  himself,  was  looking  into  social  con- 
ditions; he  put  one  hand  on  Kendricks'  shoulder, 
and  one  on  the  colonel's,  and  made  some  flattering 
joke,  apparently  at  the  expense  of  the  young  fellow, 
and  then  left  them.  March  heard  Kendricks  pro- 
test in  vain,  and  the  colonel  say  gravely  :  "  I  do  not 
wonder,  sir,  that  these  things  interest  you.  They 
constitute  a  problem  which  society  must  solve  or 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  109 

which  will  dissolve  society,"  and  he  knew  from  that 
formula,  which  the  colonel  had  once  used  with  him, 
that  he  was  laying  out  a  road,  for  the  exhibition  of 
the  hobby's  paces  later. 

Fulkerson  came  back  to  March,  who  had  turned 
toward  Conrad  Dryfoos,  and  said,  "  If  we  don't  get 
this  thing  going  pretty  soon,  it'll  be  the  death  of 
me,"  and  "just  then  Frescobakli's  butler  came  in  and 
announced  to  Dryfoos  that  dinner  was  served.  The 
old  man  looked  toward  Fulkerson  with  a  troubled 
glance,  as  if  lie  did  not  know  what  to  do ;  he  made 
a  gesture  to  touch  Lindau's  elbow.  Fulkerson  called 
out,  "Here's  Colonel  Woodburn,  Mr.  Dryfoos,"  as 
if  Dryfoos  were  looking  for  him ;  and  he  set  the 
example  of  what  he  was  to  do  by  taking  Lindau's 
arm  himself.  "Mr.  Lindau  is  going  to  sit  at  my 
end  of  the  table,  alongside  of  March.  Stand  not 
upon  the  order  of  your  going,  gentlemen,  but  fall  in 
at  once."  He  contrived  to  get  Dryfoos  and  the 
colonel  before  him,  and  he  let  March  follow  with 
Kendricks.  Conrad  came  last  with  Beaton,  who 
had  been  turning  over  the  music  at  the  piano,  and 
chafing  inwardly  at  the  whole  affair.  At  the  table 
Colonel  Woodburn  was  placed  on  Dryfoos's  right, 
and  March  on  his  left.  March  sat  on  Fulkerson's 
right,  with  Lindau  next  him ;  and  the  young  men 
occupied  the  other  seats. 

"  Put  you  next  to  March,  Mr.  Lindau,"  said  Ful- 
kerson, "  so  you  can  begin  to  put  Apollinaris  in  his 
champagne-glass  at  the  right  moment ;  you  know  his 
little  weakness  of  old;  sorry  to  say  it 's  grown  on  him," 


110  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

March  laughed  with  kindly  acquiescence  in  Ful- 
kerson's  wish  to  start  the  gaiety,  and  Lindau  patted 
him  on  the  shoulder.  "  I  know  hiss  veakness.  If 
he  liges  a  class  of  vine,  it  iss  begause  his  loaf  ingludes 
efen  hiss  enemy,  as  Shakespeare  galled  it." 

"  Ah,  but  Shakespeare  couldn't  have  been  thinking 
of  champagne,"  said  Kendricks. 

"I  suppose,  sir,"  Colonel  Woodburn  interposed 
with  lofty  courtesy,  "  champagne  could  hardly  have 
been  known  in  his  day." 

"  I  suppose  not,  colonel,"  returned  the  younger 
man  deferentially.  "  He  seemed  to  think  that  sack 
and  sugar  might  be  a  fault ;  but  he  didn't  mention 
champagne." 

"  Perhaps  he  felt  there  was  no  question  about 
that,"  suggested  Beaton,  who  then  felt  that  he  had 
not  done  himself  justice  in  the  sally. 

"  I  wonder  just  when  champagne  did  come  in," 
said  March. 

"  I  know  when  it  ought  to  come  in,"  said  Fulker- 
son.  "  Before  the  soup  ! " 

They  all  laughed,  and  gave  themselves  the  air  of 
drinking  champagne  out  of  tumblers  every  day,  as 
men  like  to  do.  Dryfoos  listened  uneasily ;  he  did 
not  quite  understand  the  allusions,  though  he  knew 
what  Shakespeare  was,  well  enough ;  Conrad's  face 
expressed  a  gentle  deprecation  of  joking  on  such  a 
subject,  but  he  said  nothing. 

The  talk  ran  on  briskly  through  the  dinner.  The 
young  men  tossed  the  ball  back  and  forth;  they 
made  some  wild  shots,  but  they  kept  it  going,  and 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  \ll 

they  laughed  when  they  were  hit.  The  wine  loosed 
Colonel  Woodburn's  tongue ;  he  became  very  com- 
panionable with  the  young  fellows ;  with  the  feeling 
that  a  literary  dinner  ought  to  have  a  didactic  scope, 
he  praised  Scott  and  Addison  as  the  only  authors  fit 
to  form  the  minds  of  gentlemen. 

Kendricks  agreed  with  him,  but  wished  to  add  the 
name  of  Flaubert  as  a  master  of  style.  "  Style,  you 
know,"  he  added,  "is  the  man." 

"Very  true,  sir;  you  are  quite  right,  sir,"  the 
colonel  assented ;  he  wondered  who  Flaubert  was. 

Beaton  praised  Baudelaire  and  Maupassant;  he 
said  these  were  the  masters.  He  recited  some  lurid 
verses  from  Baudelaire  ;  Lindau  pronounced  them  a 
disgrace  to  human  nature,  and  gave  a  passage  from 
Victor  Hugo  on  Louis  Napoleon,  with  his  heavy 
German  accent,  and  then  he  quoted  Schiller.  "  Ach, 
boat  that  iss  peaudifool !  Not  zo  1 "  he  demanded 
of  March. 

"  Yes,  beautiful ;  but,  of  course,  you  know  I  think 
there 's  nobody  like  Heine  ! " 

Lindau  threw  back  his  great  old  head  and  laughed, 
showing  a  want  of  teeth  under  his  moustache.  He 
put  his  hand  on  March's  back.  "  This  poy — he  wass 
a  poy  den — wass  so  gracy  to  pekin  reading  Heine  that 
he  gommence  with  the  tictionary  bevore  he  knows 
any  crammar,  and  ve  bick  it  out  vort  by  vort  togeder." 

"  He  was  a  pretty  cay  poy  in  those  days,  heigh, 
Lindau  1 "  asked  Fulkerson,  burlesquing  the  old 
man's  accent,  with  an  impudent  wink  that  made 
Lindau  himself  laugh.  "  Back  in  the  dark  ages,  I 


112  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

mean,  there  in  Indianapolis.  Just  how  long  ago  did 
you  old  codgers  meet  there,  anyway  1 "  Fulkerson 
saw  the  restiveness  in  Dryfoos's  eye  at  the  purely 
literary  course  the  talk  had  taken ;  he  had  intended 
it  to  lead  up  that  way  to  business,  to  Every  Other 
Week ;  but  he  saw  that  it  was  leaving  Dryfoos  too 
far  out,  and  he  wished  to  get  it  on  the  personal 
ground,  where  everybody  is  at  home. 

"  Ledt  me  zee,"  mused  Lindau.  "  AVass  it  in 
fifty-nine  or  zixty,  Passil  1  Idt  wass  a  year  or  dwo 
pefore  the  war  proke  oudt,  anyway." 

"  Those  were  exciting  times,"  said  Dryfoos,  making 
his  first  entry  into  the  general  talk.  "  I  went  down 
to  Indianapolis  with  the  first  company  from  our 
place,  and  I  saw  the  red-shirts  pouring  in  every- 
where. They  had  a  song — 

"  Oh,  never  mind  the  weather,  but  git  over  double  trouble, 
For  we  're  bound  for  the  land  of  Canaan. " 

The  fellows  locked  arms  and  went  singin'  it  up  and 
down  four  or  five  abreast  in  the  moonlight ;  crowded 
everybody  else  off  the  sidewalk. " 

"  I  rememper,  I  rememper,"  said  Lindau,  nodding 
his  head  slowly  up  and  down.  "A  coodt  many  off 
them  nefer  gome  pack  from  that  landt  of  Ganaan, 
Mr.  Dryfoos  ?  " 

"  You  're  right,  Mr.  Lindau.  But  I  reckon  it  was 
worth  it — the  country  we  've  got  now.  Here,  young 
man  ! "  He  caught  the  arm  of  the  waiter  who  was 
going  round  with  the  champagne  bottle.  "  Fill  up 
Mr.  Lindau's  glass,  there.  I  want  to  drink  the 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  113 

health  of  those  old  times  with  him.  Here 's  to  your 
empty  sleeve,  Mr.  Lindau.  God  bless  it !  No 
offence  to  you,  Colonel  Woodburn,"  said  Dryfoos, 
turning  to  him  before  he  drank. 

"  Not  at  all,  sir,  not  at  all,"  said  the  colonel.  "  I 
will  drink  with  you,  if  you  will  permit  me." 

"  We  '11  all  drink — standing,"  cried  Fulkeroon. 
"  Help  March  to  get  up,  somebody  !  Fill  high  the 
bowl  with  Samian  Apollinaris  for  Coonrod  !  Now, 
then,  hurrah  for  Lindau  !  " 

They  cheered,  and  hammered  on  the  table  with 
the  butts  of  their  knife-handles.  Lindau  remained 
seated.  The  tears  came  into  his  eyes ;  he  said,  "  I 
thank  you,  chendlemen,"  and  hiccoughed. 

'  I  'd  V  went  into  the  Avar  myself,"  said  Dryfoos, 
"  but  I  was  raisin'  a  family  of  young  children,  and  I 
didn't  see  how  I  could  leave  my  farm.  But  I  helped 
to  fill  up  the  quota  at  every  call,  and  when  the 
volunteering  stopped  I  went  round  with  the  sub- 
scription ,  paper  myself ;  and  we  offered  as  good 
bounties  as  any  in  the  State.  My  substitute  was 
killed  in  one  of  the  last  skirmishes — in  fact,  after 
Lee's  surrender — and  I  've  took  care  of  his  family, 
more  or  less,  ever  since." 

"  By  the  Avay,  March,"  said  Fulkerson,  "what  sort 
of  an  idea  AA^ould  it  be  to  have  a  good  war-story — 
might  be  a  serial — in  the  magazine  1  The  war  has 
never  fully  panned  .out  in  fiction  yet.  It  was  used 
a  good  deal  just  after  it  was  over,  and  then  it  was 
dropped.  I  think  it 's  time  to  take  it  up  again.  I 
believe  it  would  be  a  card." 


114  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

It  was  running  in  March's  mind  that  Dryfoos  had 
an  old  rankling  shame  in  his  heart  for  not  having 
gone  into  the  war,  and  that  he  had  often  made  that 
explanation  of  his  course  without  having  ever  been 
satisfied  with  it.  He  felt  sorry  for  him  ;  the  fact 
seemed  pathetic ;  it  suggested  a  dormant  nobleness 
in  the  man. 

Beaton  was  saying  to  Fulkerson,  "  You  might  get 
a  series  of  sketches  by  substitutes;  the  substitutes 
haven't  been  much  heard  from  in  the  war  literature. 
How  would  '  The  Autobiography  of  a  Substitute ' 
do  ?  You  might  follow  him  up  to  the  moment  he 
was  killed  in  the  other  man's  place,  and  inquire 
whether  he  had  any  right  to  the  feelings  of  a  hero 
when  he  was  only  hired  in  the  place  of  one.  Might 
call  it  '  The  Career  of  a  Deputy  Hero.'" 

"  I  fancy,"  said  March,  "  that  there  was  a  great 
deal  of  mixed  motive  in  the  men  who  went  into  the 
war  as  well  as  in  those  who  kept  out  of  it.  We 
canonised  all  that  died  or  suffered  in  it,  but  some  of 
them  must  have  been  self-seeking  and  low-minded, 
like  men  in  other  vocations."  He  found  himself 
saying  this  in  Dryfoos's  behalf  ;  the  old  man  looked 
at  him  gratefully  at  first,  he  thought,  and  then  sus- 
piciously. 

Lindau  turned  his  head  toward  him  and  said : 
"  You  are  righdt,  Passil ;  you  are  righdt.  I  haf 
zeen  on  the  fieldt  of  pattle  the  voarst  eggsipitions 
of  human  paseness — chelousy,  fanity,  ecodistic  bridte. 
I  haf  zeen  men  in  the  face  off  death  itself  gofferned 
by  motif es  as  low  as — as  pusiness  motif es." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  115 

"Well,"  said  Fulkerson,  "it  would  be  a  grand 
thing  for  Every  Other  Week  if  we  could  get  some  of 
those  ideas  worked  up  into  a  series.  It  would  make 
a  lot  of  talk." 

Colonel  Woodburn  ignored  him  in  saying,  "I 
think,  Major  Lindau " 

"  High  brifate ;  prefet  gorporal,"  the  old  man  in- 
terrupted, in  rejection  of  the  title. 

Kendricks  laughed  and  said,  with  a  glance  of 
appreciation  at  Lindau,  "  Brevet  corporal  is  good." 

Colonel  Woodburn  frowned  a  little,  and  passed 
over  the  joke.  "  I  think  Mr.  Lindau  is  right.  Such 
exhibitions  were  common  to  both  sides,  though  if 
you  gentlemen  will  pardon  me  for  saying  so,  I  think 
they  were  less  frequent  on  ours.  We  were  fighting 
more  immediately  for  existence ;  we  were  fewer  than 
you  were,  and  we  knew  it ;  we  felt  more  intensely 
that  if  each  were  not  for  all,  then  none  was  for  any." 

The  colonel's  words  made  their  impression.  Dry- 
foos  said  with  authority,  "That  is  so." 

"  Colonel  Woodburn,"  Fulkerson  called  out,  "  if 
you  '11  work  up  those  ideas  into  a  short  paper — say 
three  thousand  words — I  '11  engage  to  make  March 
take  it." 

The  colonel  went  on  without  replying :  "  But  Mr. 
Lindau  is  right  in  characterising  some  of  the  motives 
that  led  men  to  the  cannon's  mouth  as  no  higher 
than  business  motives,  and  his  comparison  is  the 
most  forcible  that  he  could  have  used.  I  was  very 
much  struck  by  it" 

The  hobby  was  out,  the  colonel  was  in  the  saddle 
2G 


116  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

with  so  firm  a  seat  that  no  effort  sufficed  to  dislodge 
him.  The  dinner  went  on  from  course  to  course 
with  barbaric  profusion,  and  from  time  to  time  Ful- 
kerson  tried  to  bring  the  talk  back  to  Every  Other 
Week.  But  perhaps  because  that  was  only  the 
ostensible  and  not  the  real  object  of  the  dinner, 
which  was  to  bring  a  number  of  men  together 
under  Dryfoos's  roof,  and  make  them  the  wit- 
nesses of  his  splendour,  make  them  feel  the  power 
of  his  wealth,  Fulkerson's  attempts  failed.  The 
colonel  showed  how  commercialism  was  the  poison 
at  the  heart  of  our  national  life  ;  how  we  began  as  a 
simple,  agricultural  people,  who  had  fled  to  these 
shores  with  the  instinct,  divinely  implanted,  of  build- 
ing a  State  such  as  the  sun  never  shone  upon  before ; 
how  we  had  conquered  the  wilderness  and  the 
savage ;  how  we  had  flung  off,  in  our  struggle  with 
the  mother-country,  the  trammels  of  tradition  and 
precedent,  and  had  settled  down,  a  free  nation,  to 
the  practice  of  the  arts  of  peace  ;  how  the  spirit  of 
commercialism  had  stolen  insidiously  upon  us,  and 
the  infernal  impulse  of  competition  had  embroiled 
us  in  a  perpetual  warfare  of  interests,  developing 
the  worst  passions  of  our  nature,  and  teaching  us  to 
trick  and  betray  and  destroy  one  another  in  the 
strife  for  money,  till  now  that  impulse  had  exhausted 
itself,  and  we  found  competition  gone  and  the  whole 
economic  problem  in  the  hands  of  monopolies — the 
Standard  Oil  Company,  the  Sugar  Trust,  the 
Rubber  Trust,  and  what  not.  And  now  what  was 
the  next  thing  ?  Affairs  could  not  remain  as  they 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  117 

were ;  it  was  impossible  ;  and  what  was  the  next 
thing  1 

The  company  listened  for  the  main  part  silently. 
Dryfoos  tried  to  grasp  the  idea  of  commercialism  as 
the  colonel  seemed  to  hold  it ;  he  conceived  of  it  as 
something  like  the  dry-goods  business  on  a  vast 
scale,  and  he  knew  he  had  never  been  in  that.  He 
did  not  like  to  hear  competition  called  infernal ;  he 
had  always  supposed  it  was  something  sacred  ;  but 
he  approved  of  what  Colonel  Woodburn  said  of  the 
Standard  Oil  Company;  it  was  all  true;  the  Stan- 
dard Oil  had  squeezed  Dryfoos  once,  and  made  him 
sell  it  a  lot  of  oil-wells  by  putting  down  the  price  of 
oil  so  low  in  that  region  that  he  lost  money  on  every 
barrel  he  pumped. 

All  the  rest  listened  silently,  except  Lindau ;  at 
every  point  the  colonel  made  against  the  present 
condition  of  things  he  said  more  and  more  fiercely, 
"  You  are  righdt,  you  are  righdt."  His  eyes  glowed, 
his  hand  played  with  his  knife-hilt.  When  the 
colonel  demanded,  "  And  what  is  the  next  thing  ?  " 
he  threw  himself  forward,  and  repeated,  "  Yes,  sir  ! 
What  is  the  next  thing  ]  " 

"  Natural  gas,  by  thunder  ! "  shouted  Fulkerson. 

One  of  the  waiters  had  profited  by  Lindau's 
posture  to  lean  over  him  and  put  down  in  the 
middle  of  the  table  a  structure  in  white  sugar.  It 
expressed  Frescobaldi's  conception  of  a  derrick,  and 
a  touch  of  nature  had  been  added  in  the  flame  of 
brandy,  which  burned  luridly  up  from  a  small  pit  in 
the  centre  of  the  base,  and  represented  the  gas  in 


118  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

combustion  as  it  issued  from  the  ground.  Fulkerson 
burst  into  a  roar  of  laughter  with  the  words  that 
recognised  Frescobaldi's  personal  tribute  to  Dryfoos. 
Everybody  rose  and  peered  over  at  the  thing,  while 
he  explained  the  work  of  sinking  a  gas-well,  as  he 
had  already  explained  it  to  Frescobaldi.  In  the 
midst  of  his  lecture  he  caught  sight  of  the  caterer 
himself,  where  he  stood  in  the  pantry  doorway, 
smiling  with  an  artist's  anxiety  for  the  effect  of  his 
masterpiece. 

"  Come  in,  come  in,  Frescobaldi !  We  want  to 
congratulate  you,"  Fulkerson  called  to  him.  "  Here, 
gentlemen  !  Here 's  Frescobaldi's  health." 

They  all  drank  ;  and  Frescobaldi,  smiling  bril- 
liantly and  rubbing  his  hands  as  he  bowed  right 
and  left,  permitted  himself  to  say  to  Dryfoos,  "  You 
are  please ;  no  1  You  like  ? " 

"  First-rate,  first-rate  ! "  said  the  old  man  j  but 
when  the  Italian  had  bowed  himself  out  and  his 
guests  had  sunk  into  their  seats  again,  he  said  dryly 
to  Fulkerson,  "  I  reckon  they  didn't  have  to  torpedo 
that  well,  or  the  derrick  wouldn't  look  quite  so  nice 
and  clean." 

"  Yes,"  Fulkerson  answered,  "  and  that  ain't  quite 
the  style — that  little  wiggly-waggly  blue  flame — 
that  the  gas  acts  when  you  touch  off  a  good  vein  of 
it.  This  might  do  for  weak-gas  ; "  and  he  went  on 
to  explain  :  "  They  call  it  weak-gas  when  they  tap 
it  two  or  three  hundred  feet  down ;  and  anybody 
can  sink  a  well  in  his  backyard  and  get  enough  gas 
to  light  and  heat  his  house.  I  remember  one  fellow 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  119 

that  had  it  blazing  up  from  a  pipe  through  a  flower- 
bed, just  like  a  jet  of  water  from  a  fountain.  My, 
my,  my  !  You  fel — you  gentlemen — ought  to  go 
out  and  see  that  country,  all  of  you.  Wish  we 
could  torpedo  this  well,  Mr.  Dryfoos,  and  let  'em 
see  how  it  works  !  Mind  that  one  you  torpedoed 
for  me  1  You  know,  when  they  sink  a  well,"  he 
went  on  to  the  company,  "  they  can't  always  most 
generally  sometimes  tell  whether  they're  goin'  to 
get  gas  or  oil  or  salt-water.  Why,  when  they 
first  began  to  bore  for  salt-water  out  on  the 
Kanawha,  back  about  the  beginning  of  the  century, 
they  used  to  get  gas  now  and  then,  and  then  they 
considered  it  a  failure ;  they  called  a  gas-well  a 
blower,  and  give  it  up  in  disgust ;  the  time  wasn't 
ripe  for  gas  yet.  Now  they  bore  away  sometimes 
till  they  get  half-way  to  China,  and  don't  seem  to 
strike  anything  worth  speaking  of.  Then  they  put 
a  dynamite  torpedo  down  in  the  well  and  explode 
it.  They  have  a  little  bar  of  iron  that  they  call  a 
Go-devil,  and  they  just  drop  it  down  on  the  business 
end  of  the  torpedo,  and  then  stand  from  under,  if 
you  please  !  You  hear  a  noise,  and  in  about  half  a 
minute  you  begin  to  see  one,  and  it  begins  to  rain  oil 
and  mud  and  salt-Avater  and  rocks  and  pitchforks 
and  adoptive  citizens ;  and  when  it  clears  up  the 
derrick 's  painted — got  a  coat  on  that  '11  wear  in  any 
climate.  That's  what  our  honoured  host  meant. 
Generally  get  some  visiting  lady,  when  there 's  one 
round,  to  drop  the  Go-devil.  But  that  day  we  had 
to  put  up  with  Conrad  here.  They  offered  to  let 


1  20  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

me  drop  it,  birt  I  declined.  I  told  'em  I  hadn't 
much  practice  with  Go-devils  in  the  newspaper 
syndicate  business,  and  I  wasn't  very  well  myself, 
anyway.  Astonishing,"  Fulkerson  continued,  with 
the  air  of  relieving  his  explanation  by  an  anecdote, 
"  how  reckless  they  get  using  dynamite  when 
they  're  torpedoing  wells.  We  stopped  at  one  place 
where  a  fellow  was  handling  the  cartridges  pretty 
freely,  and  Mr.  Dryfoos  happened  to  caution  him  a 
little,  and  that  ass  came  up  with  one  of  'em  in  his 
hand,  and  began  to  pound  it  on  the  buggy-wheel  to 
show  us  how  safe  it  was.  I  turned  green,  I  was  so 
scared  ;  but  Mr.  Dryfoos  kept  his  colour,  and  kind 
of  coaxed  the  fellow  till  he  quit.  You  could  see  he 
was  the  fool  kind,  that  if  you  tried  to  stop  him  he  'd 
keep  on  hammering  that  cartridge,  just  to  show  that 
it  wouldn't  explode,  till  he  blew  you  into  Kingdom 
Come.  When  we  got  him  to  go  away,  Mr.  Dryfoos 
drove  up  to  his  foreman.  '  Pay  Sheney  off,  and 
discharge  him  on  the  spot,'  says  he.  '  He 's  too  safe 
a  man  to  have  round  ;  he  knows  too  much  about 
dynamite.'  I  never  saw  anybody  so  cool" 

Dryfoos  modestly  dropped  his  head  under  Fulker- 
son's  flattery  and,  without  lifting  it,  turned  his  eyes 
toward  Colonel  Woodburn.  "I  had  all  sorts  of 
men  to  deal  with  in  developing  my  property  out 
there,  but  I  had  very  little  trouble  with  them,  gene- 
rally speaking." 

"  Ah,  ah !  you  foundt  the  labouring-man  reasonable 
— dractable — tocile  ? "  Lindau  put  in. 

"Yes,   generally    speaking,"    Dryfoos  answered. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       121 

"  They  mostly  knew  which  side  of  their  bread  was 
buttered.  I  did  have  one  little  difficulty  at  one 
time.  It  happened  to  be  when  Mr.  Fulkerson 
was  out  there.  Some  of  the  men  tried  to  form  a 
union " 

"  No,  no  !  "  cried  Fulkerson.  "  Let  me  tell  that ! 
I  know  you  wouldn't  do  yourself  justice,  Mr.  Dry- 
foos,  and  I  want  'em  to  know  how  a  strike  can  be 
managed,  if  you  take  it  in  time.  You  see,  some  of 
those  fellows  got  a  notion  that  there  ought  to  be  a 
union  among  the  working-men  to  keep  up  wages,  and 
dictate  to  the  employers,  and  Mr.  Dryfoos's  foreman 
was  the  ringleader  in  the  business.  They  under- 
stood pretty  well  that  as  soon  as  he  found  it  out 
that  foreman  would  walk  the  plank,  and  so  they 
watched  out  till  they  thought  they  had  Mr.  Dry- 
foos  just  where  they  wanted  him — everything  on 
the  keen  jump,  and  every  man  worth  his  weight 
in  diamonds — and  then  they  come  to  him,  and 
told  him  to  sign  a  promise  to  keep  that  foreman 
to  the  end  of  the  season,  or  till  he  was  through 
with  the  work  on  the  Dryfoos  and  Hendry  Addi- 
tion, under  penalty  of  having  them  all  knock  off. 
Mr.  Dryfoos  smelt  a  mice,  but  he  couldn't  tell  where 
the  mice  was  ;  he  saw  that  they  did  have  him,  and 
he  signed,  of  course.  There  wasn't  anything  really 
against  the  fellow,  anyway ;  he  was  a  first-rate  man, 
and  he  did  his  duty  every  time ;  only  he  'd  got  some 
of  those  ideas  into  his  head,  and  they  turned  it.  Mr. 
Dryfoos  signed,  and  then  he  laid  low." 

March  saw  Lindau  listening  with  a  mounting  in- 
VOL.  II.— 6 


122  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

tensity,  and  heard  him  murmur  in  German,  "  Shame- 
ful!  shameful!" 

Fulkerson  went  on  :  "  Well,  it  wasn't  long  before 
they  began  to  show  their  hand,  but  Mr.  Dryfoos 
kept  dark.  He  agreed  to  everything ;  there  never 
was  such  an  obliging  capitalist  before  ;  there  wasn't 
a  thing  they  asked  of  him  that  he  didn't  do,  with 
the  greatest  of  pleasure,  and  all  went  merry  as  a 
marriage-bell  till  one  morning  a  whole  gang  of  fresh 
men  marched  into  the  Dryfoos  and  Hendry  Addition, 
under  the  escort  of  a  dozen  Pinkertons  with  repeating 
rifles  at  half-cock,  and  about  fifty  fellows  found  them- 
selves out  of  a  job.  You  never  saw  such  a  mad  set" 

"  Pretty  neat,"  said  Kendricks,  who  looked  at  the 
affair  purely  from  an  aesthetic  point  of  view.  "  Such 
a  coup  as  that  would  tell  tremendously  in  a  play." 

"  That  was  vile  treason,"  said  Lindau  in  German 
to  March.  "  He 's  an  infamous  traitor  !  I  cannot 
stay  here.  I  must  go." 

He  struggled  to  rise,  while  March  held  him  by 
the  coat,  and  implored  him  under  his  voice,  "For 
Heaven's  sake,  don't,  Lindau  !  You  owe  it  to  your- 
self not  to  make  a  scene,  if  you  come  here."  Some- 
thing in  it  all  affected  him  comically ;  he  could  not 
help  laughing. 

The  others  were  discussing  the  matter,  and  seemed 
not  to  have  noticed  Lindau,  who  controlled  himself 
and  sighed  :  "  You  are  right.  I  must  have  patience." 

Beaton  was  saying  to  Dryfoos,  "  Pity  your  Pinker- 
tons  couldn't  have  given  them  a  few  shots  before 
they  left." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       123 

"No,  that  wasn't  necessary,"  said  Dryfoos.  "I 
succeeded  in  breaking  up  the  union.  I  entered  into 
an  agreement  with  other  parties  not  to  employ  any 
man  who  would  not  swear  that  he  was  non-union. 
If  they  had  attempted  violence,  of  course  they  could 
have  been  shot.  But  there  was  no  fear  of  that. 
Those  fellows  can  always  be  depended  upon  to  cut 
each  other's  throats  in  the  long-run." 

"But  sometimes,"  said  Colonel  Woodburn,  who 
had  been  watching  throughout  for  a  chance  to  mount 
his  hobby  again,  "  they  make  a  good  deal  of  trouble 
first.  How  was  it  in  the  great  railroad  strike  of 
'77  1 " 

"Well,  I  guess  there  was  a  little  trouble  that 
time,  colonel,"  said  Fulkerson.  "But  the  men  that 
undertake  to  override  the  laws  and  paralyse  the 
industries  of  a  country  like  this  generally  get  left  in 
the  end." 

"  Yes,  sir,  generally  ;  and  up  to  a  certain  point, 
always.  But  it 's  the  exceptional  that  is  apt  to 
happen,  as  well  as  the  unexpected.  And  a  little 
reflection  will  convince  any  gentleman  here  that 
there  is  always  a  danger  of  the  exceptional  in  your 
system.  The  fact  is,  those  fellows  have  the  game  in 
their  own  hands  already.  A  strike  of  the  whole 
body  of  the  Brotherhood  of  Engineers  alone  would 
starve  out  the  entire  Atlantic  seaboard  in  a  week ; 
labour  insurrection  could  make  head  at  a  dozen  given 
points,  and  your  government  couldn't  move  a  man 
over  the  roads  without  the  help  of  the  engineers." 

"  That    is    so,"    said    Kendrick,   struck  by  the 


124       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

dramatic  character  of  the  conjecture.  He  imagined 
a  fiction  dealing  with  the  situation  as  something 
already  accomplished. 

"Why  don't  some  fellow  do  the  Battle  of  Dorking 
act  with  that  thing  1 "  said  Fulkerson.  "  It  would 
be  a  card." 

"  Exactly  what  I  was  thinking,  Mr.  Fulkerson," 
said  Kendricks. 

Fulkerson  laughed.  "  Telepathy — clear  case  of 
mind-transference.  Better  see  March,  here,  about 
it.  I'd  like  to  have  it  in  Every  Other  Week.  It 
would  make  talk." 

"  Perhaps  it  might  set  your  people  to  thinking  as 
well  as  talking,"  said  the  colonel. 

"Well,  sir,"  said  Dryfoos,  setting  his  lips  so 
tightly  together  that  his  imperial  stuck  straight  out- 
ward, "  if  I  had  my  way,  there  wouldn't  be  any 
Brotherhood  of  Engineers,  nor  any  other  kind  of 
labour  union  in  the  whole  country." 

"  What ! "  shouted  Lindau.  "  You  would  sobbress 
the  unionss  of  the  voarking-men  ? " 

"  Yes,  I  would." 

"And  what  would  you  do  with  the  •  unionss  of 
the  gabidalists — the  drosts — and  gompines,  and 
boolss  ?  Would  you  dake  the  righdt  from  one  and 
gif  it  to  the  odder  1 " 

"  Yes,  sir,  I  would,"  said  Dryfoos,  with  a  wicked 
look  at  him. 

Lindau  was  about  to  roar  back  at  him  with  some 
furious  protest,  but  March  put  his  hand  on  his 
shoulder  imploringly,  and  Lindau  turned  to  him  to 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  125 

say  in  German,  "  But  it  is  infamous — infamous  ! 
What  kind  of  man  is  this  1  Who  is  he  ?  He  has 
the  heart  of  a  tyrant." 

Colonel  Woodburn  cut  in.  "  You  couldn't  do 
that,  Mr.  Dryfoos,  under  your  system.  And  if  you 
attempted  it,  with  your  conspiracy  laws,  and  that 
kind  of  thing,  it  might  bring  the  climax  sooner  than 
.you  expected.  Your  commercialised  society  has 
built  its  house  on  the  sands.  It  will  have  to  go. 
But  I  should  be  sorry  if  it  went  before  its  time." 

"  You  are  righdt,  sir,"  said  Lindau.  "  It  would 
be  a  bity.  I  hobe  it  will  last  till  it  feelss  its  rotten- 
ness, like  Herodt.  Boat,  when  its  hour  gomes, 
when  it  trops  to  bieces  with  the  veight  off  its  own 
gorrubtion — what  then  ? " 

"  It 's  not  to  be  supposed  that  a  system  of  things 
like  this  can  drop  to  pieces  of  its  own  accord,  like 
the  old  Eepublic  of  Venice,"  said  the  colonel.  "  But 
when  the  last  vestige  of  commercial  society  is  gone, 
then  we  can  begin  to  build  anew  ;  and  we  shall  build 
upon  the  central  idea,  not  of  the  false  liberty  you 
now  worship,  but  of  responsibility — responsibility. 
The  enlightened,  the  moneyed,  the  cultivated  class 
shall  be  responsible  to  the  central  authority — em- 
peror, duke,  president ;  the  name  does  not  matter — 
for  the  national  expense  and  the  national  defence, 
and  it  shall  be  responsible  to  the  working-classes  of 
all  kinds  for  homes  and  lands  and  implements,  and 
the  opportunity  to  labour  at  all  times.  The  working- 
classes  shall  be  responsible  to  the  leisure  class  for 
the  support  of  its  dignity  in  peace,  and  shall  be 


126       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

subject  to  its  command  in  war.  The  rich  shall 
warrant  the  poor  against  planless  production  and  the 
ruin  that  now  follows,  against  danger  from  without 
and  famine  from  within,  and  the  poor " 

"  No,  no,  no  !  "  shouted  Lindau.  "  The  State  shall 
do  that — the  whole  beople.  The  men  who  voark 
shall  have  and  shall  eat ;  and  the  men  that  will  not 
voark,  they  shall  sdarfe.  But  no  man  need  sdarfe. 
He  will  go  to  the  State,  and  the  State  will  see  that 
he  haf  voark,  and  that  he  haf  foodt.  All  the  roadts 
and  mills  and  mines  and  landts  shall  be  the  beople's 
and  be  ron  by  the  beople  for  the  beople.  There  shall 
be  no  rich  and  no  boor ;  and  there  shall  not  be  war 
any  more,  for  what  bower  wouldt  dare  to  addack  a 
beople  bound  togeder  in  a  broderhood  like  that  1 " 

"Lion  and  lamb  act,"  said  Fulkerson,  not  well 
knowing,  after  so  much  champagne,  what  words  he 
was  using. 

No  one  noticed  him,  and  Colonel  Woodburn  said 
coldly  to  Lindau,  "You  are  talking  paternalism,  sir." 

"  And  you  are  dalking  feutalism ! "  retorted  the 
old  man. 

The  Colonel  did  not  reply.  A  silence  ensued, 
which  no  one  broke  till  Fulkerson  said  :  "  Well, 
now,  look  here.  If  either  one  of  these  millenniums 
was  brought  about,  by  force  of  arms,  or  otherwise, 
what  would  become  of  Every  Other  Week  ?  Who 
would  want  March  for  an  editor?  How  would 
Beaton  sell  his  pictures  ?  Who  would  print  Mr. 
Kendricks'  little  society  verses  and  short  stories  ? 
What  would  become  of  Conrad  and  his  srood 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  127 

works  ?  "  Those  named  grinned  in  support  of  Ful- 
kerson's  diversion,  but  Lindau  and  the  colonel  did 
not  speak ;  Dryfoos  looked  down  at  his  plate,  frown- 
ing. A  waiter  came  round  with  cigars,  and  Fulker- 
son  took  one.  "  Ah,"  he  said,  as  he  bit  off  the  end, 
and  leaned  over  to  the  emblematic  masterpiece,  where 
the  brandy  was  still  feebly  flickering,  "  I  wonder  if 
there  '&  enough  natural  gas  left  to  light  my  cigar." 
His  effort  put  the  flame  out  and  knocked  the  derrick 
over ;  it  broke  in  fragments  on  the  table.  Fulkerson 
cackled  over  the  ruin  :  "  I  wonder  if  all  Moffitt  will 
look  that  way  after  labour  and  capital  have  fought  it 
out  together.  I  hope  this  ain't  ominous  of  any- 
thing personal,  Dryfoos  ? " 

"  I  '11  take  the  risk  of  it,"  said  the  old  man 
harshly. 

He  rose  mechanically,  and  Fulkerson  said  to  Fres- 
cobaldi's  man,  "  You  can  bring  us  the  coffee  in  the 
library." 

The  talk  did  not  recover  itself  there.  Lindau 
would  not  sit  down  ;  he  refused  coffee,  and  dismissed 
himself  with  a  haughty  bow  to  the  company ; 
Colonel  Woodburn  shook  hands  elaborately  all 
round,  when  he  had  smoked  his  cigar ;  the  others 
followed  him.  It  seemed  to  March  that  his  own 
good-night  from  Dryfoos  was  dry  and  cold. 


VII. 

MARCH  met  Fulkerson  on  the  steps  of  the  office 
next  morning,  when  he  arrived  rather  later  than  his 
wont.  Fulkerson  did  not  show  any  of  the  signs 
of  suffering  from  the  last  night's  pleasure  which 
painted  themselves  in  March's  face.  He  flirted  his 
hand  gaily  in  the  air,  and  said,  "  How 's  your  poor 
head  ? "  and  broke  into  a  knowing  laugh.  "  You 
don't  seem  to  have  got  up  with  the  lark  this 
morning.  The  old  gentleman  is  in  there  with 
Conrad,  as  bright  as  a  biscuit ;  he 's  beat  you 
down.  Well,  we  did  have  a  good  time,  didn't 
we?  And  old  Lindau  and  the  colonel,  didn't  they 
have  a  good  time  1  I  don't  suppose  they  ever  had 
a  chance  before  to  give  their  theories  quite  so  much 
air.  Oh  my,  how  they  did  ride  over  us !  I  !m  just 
going  down  to  see  Beaton  about  the  cover  of  the 
Christmas  number.  I  think  we  ought  to  try  it  in 
three  or  four  colours,  if  we  are  going  to  observe 
the  day  at  all."  He  was  off  before  March  could 
pull  himself  together  to  ask  what  Dryfoos  wanted 
at  the  office  at  that  hour  of  the  morning ;  he 
always  came  in  the  afternoon  on  his  way  uptown. 

The  fact  of  his  presence  renewed  the  sinister  mis- 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  129 

givings  with  which  March  had  parted  from  him  the 
night  before,  but  Fulkerson's  cheerfulness  seemed 
to  gainsay  them ;  afterwards  March  did  not  know 
whether  to  attribute  this  mood  to  the  slipperiness 
that  he  was  aware  of  at  times  in  Fulkerson,  or  to  a 
cynical  amusement  he  might  have  felt  at  leaving 
him  alone  to  the  old  man,  who  mounted  to  his  room 
shortly  after  March  had  reached  it. 

A  sort  of  dumb  anger  showed  itself  in  his  face ; 
his  jaw  was  set  so  firmly  that  he  did  not  seem  able 
at  once  to  open  it.  He  asked,  without  the  cere- 
monies of  greeting,  "What  does  that  one-armed 
Dutchman  do  on  this  book  1 " 

11  What  does  he  do  ? "  March  echoed,  as  people 
are  apt  to  do  with  a  question  that  is  mandatory  and 
offensive. 

"  Yes,  sir,  what  does  he  do  ?  Does  he  write  for 
it?" 

"  I  suppose  you  mean  Lindau,"  said  March.  He 
saw  no  reason  /or  refusing  to  answer  Dryfoos's  de- 
mand, and  he  decided  to  ignore  its  terms.  "  No,  he 
doesn't  write  for  it  in  the  usual  way.  He  translates 
for  it;  he  examines  the  foreign  magazines,  and  draws 
my  attention  to  anything  he  thinks  of  interest.  But 
I  told  you  about  this  before " 

"  I  know  what  you  told  me,  well  enough.  And  I 
know  what  he  is.  He  is  a  red-mouthed  labour- 
agitator.  He 's  one  of  those  foreigners  that  come 
here  from  places  where  they  've  never  had  a  decent 
meal's  victuals  in  their  lives,  and  as  soon  as  they  get 
their  stomachs  full,  they  begin  to  make  trouble  be- 
6* 


130  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

tween  our  people  and  their  hands.  There 's  where 
the  strikes  come  from,  and  the  unions  and  the  secret 
societies.  They  come  here  and  break  our  Sabbath, 
and  teach  their  atheism.  They  ought  to  be  hung ! 
Let  'em  go  back  if  they  don't  like  it  over  here. 
They  want  to  ruin  the  country." 

March  could  not  help  smiling  a  little  at  the  words, 
which  came  fast  enough  now  in  the  hoarse  staccato  of 
Dryfoos's  passion.  "I  don't  know  whom  you  mean 
by  they,  generally  speaking ;  but  I  had  the  impres- 
sion that  poor  old  Lindau  had  once  done  his  best  to 
save  the  country.  I  don't  always  like  his  way  of 
talking,  but  I  know  that  he  is  one  of  the  truest  and 
kindest  souls  in  the  world ;  and  he  is  no  more  an 
atheist  than  I  am.  He  is  my  friend,  and  I  can't 
allow  him  to  be  misunderstood." 

"  I  don't  care  what  he  is,"  Dryfoos  broke  out,  "  I 
won't  have  him  round.  He  can't  have  any  more 
work  from  this  office.  I  want  you  to  stop  it.  I 
want  you  to  turn  him  off." 

March  was  standing  at  his  desk,  as  he  had  risen 
to  receive  Dryfoos  when  he  entered.  He  now  sat 
down,  and  began  to  open  his  letters. 

"  Do  you  hear  1 "  the  old  man  roared  at  him.  "  I 
want  you  to  turn  him  off." 

"  Excuse  me,  Mr.  Dryfoos,"  said  March,  succeed- 
ing in  an  effort  to  speak  calmly,  "  I  don't  know 
you,  in  such  a  matter  as  this.  My  arrangements 
as  editor  of  Every  Other  Week  were  made  with  Mr. 
Fulkerson.  I  have  always  listened  to  any  sugges- 
tion he  has  had  to  make." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  131 

"  I  don't  care  for  Mr.  Fulkerson  !  He  has  nothing 
to  do  with  it,"  retorted  Dryfoos ;  but  he  seemed  a 
little  daunted  by  March's  position. 

"  He  has  everything  to  do  with  it  as  far  as  I  am. 
concerned,"  March  answered,  with  a  steadiness  that 
he  did  not  feel.  "  I  know  that  you  are  the  owner 
of  the  periodical,  but  I  can't  receive  any  suggestion 
from  you,  for  the  reason  that  I  have  given.  Nobody 
but  Mr.  Fulkerson  has  any  right  to  talk  with  me 
about  its  management." 

Dryfoos  glared  at  him  for  a  moment,  and  de- 
manded threateningly :  "  Then  you  say  you  won't 
turn  that  old  loafer  off?  You  say  that  I  have 
got  to  keep  on  paying  my  money  out  to  buy 
beer  for  a  man  that  would  cut  my  throat  if  he 
got  the  chance  ?  " 

"  I  say  nothing  at  all,  Mr.  Dryfoos,"  March 
answered.  The  blood  came  into  his  face,  and  he 
added :  "  But  I  will  say  that  if  you  speak  again  of 
Mr.  Lindau  in  those  terms,  one  of  us  must  leave  this 
room.  I  will  not  hear  you." 

Dryfoos  looked  at  him  with  astonishment ;  then 
he  struck  his  hat  down  on  his  head,  and  stamped 
out  of  the  room  and  down  the  stairs ;  and  a  vague 
pity  came  into  March's  heart  that  was  not  altogether 
for  himself.  He  might  be  the  greater  sufferer  in  the 
end,  but  he  was  sorry  to  have  got  the  better  of  that 
old  man  for  the  moment ;  and  he  felt  ashamed  of 
the  anger  into  which  Dryfoos's  anger  had  surprised 
him.  He  knew  he  could  not  say  too  much  in  de- 
fence of  Lindau's  generosity  and  unselfishness,  and 


132        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

he  had  not  attempted  to  defend  him  as  a  political 
economist.  He  could  not  have  taken  any  ground  in 
relation  to  Dryfoos  but  that  which  he  held,  and  he 
felt  satisfied  that  he  was  right  in  refusing  to  receive 
instructions  or  commands  from  him.  Yet  somehow 
he  was  not  satisfied  with  the  whole  affair,  and  not 
merely  because  his  present  triumph  threatened  his 
final  advantage,  but  because  he  felt  that  in  his  heat 
he  had  hardly  done  justice  to  Dryfoos's  rights  in  the 
matter ;  it  did  not  quite  console  him  to  reflect  that 
Dryfoos  had  himself  made  it  impossible.  He  was 
tempted  to  go  home  and  tell  his  wife  what  had 
happened,  and  begin  his  preparations  for  the  future 
at  once.  But  he  resisted  this  weakness  and  kept 
mechanically  about  his  work,  opening  the  letters  and 
the  manuscripts  before  him  with  that  curious  double 
action  of  the  mind  common  in  men  of  vivid  imagi- 
nations. It  was  a  relief  when  Conrad  Dryfoos, 
having  apparently  waited  to  make  sure  that  his 
father  would  not  return,  came  up  from  the  counting- 
room  and  looked  in  on  March  with  a  troubled  face. 

"Mr.  March,"  he  began,  "I  hope  father  hasn't 
been  saying  anything  to  you  that  you  can't  overlook. 
I  know  he  was  very  much  excited,  and  when  he  is 
excited  he  is  apt  to  say  things  that  he  is  sorry  for." 

The  apologetic  attitude  taken  for  Dryfoos,  so 
different  from  any  attitude  the  peremptory  old  man 
would  have  conceivably  taken  for  himself,  made 
March  smile.  "  Oh  no.  I  fancy  the  boot  is  on  the 
other  leg.  I  suspect  I've  said  some  things  your 
father  can't  overlook,  Conrad."  He  called  the 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  133 

young  man  by  his  Christian  name  partly  to  dis- 
tinguish him  from  his  father,  partly  from  the  in- 
fection of  Fulkerson's  habit,  and  partly  from  a  kind- 
ness for  him  that  seemed  naturally  to  express  itself 
in  that  way. 

"I  know  he  didn't  sleep  last  night,  after  you  all 
went  away,"  Conrad  pursued,  "  and  of  course  that 
made  him  more  irritable;  and  he  was  tried  a  good 
deal  by  some  of  the  things  that  Mr.  Lindau  said." 

"I  was  tried  a  good  deal  myself,"  said  March. 
"Lindau  ought  never  to  have  been  there." 

"  No."     Conrad  seemed  only  partially  to  assent. 

"I  told  Mr.  Fulkerson  so.  I  warned  him  that 
Lindau  would  be  apt  to  break  out  in  some  way.  It 
wasn't  just  to  him,  and  it  wasn't  just  to  your  father, 
to  ask  him." 

"Mr.  Fulkerson  had  a  good  motive,"  Conrad 
gently  urged.  "  He  did  it  because  he  hurt  his 
feelings  that  day  about  the  pension." 

"  Yes,  but  it  was  a  mistake.  He  knew  that 
Lindau  was  inflexible  about  his  principles,  as  he  calls 
them,  and  that  one  of  his  first  principles  is  to 
denounce  the  rich  in  season  and  out  of  season.  I 
don't  remember  just  what  he  said  last  night ;  and  I 
really  thought  I  'd  kept  him  from  breaking  out  in 
the  most  offensive  way.  But  your  father  seems  very 
much  incensed." 

"  Yes,  I  know,"  said  Conrad. 

"  Of  course,  I  don't  agree  with  Lindau.  I  think 
there  are  as  many  good,  kind,  just  people  among  the 
rich  as  there  are  among  the  poor,  and  that  they  are 


134  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

as  generous  and  helpful.  But  Lindau  has  got  hold 
of  one  of  those  partial  truths  that  hurt  worse  than 
the  whole  truth,  and " 

"  Partial  truth ! "  the  young  man  interrupted. 
"  Didn't  the  Saviour  himself  say,  '  How  hardly  shall 
they  that  have  riches  enter  into  the  kingdom  of 
God'?" 

"  Why,  bless  my  soul ! "  cried  March.  "  Do  you 
agree  with  Lindau  1 " 

"  I  agree  with  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,"  said  the 
young  man  solemnly,  and  a  strange  light  of  fanati- 
cism, of  exaltation,  came  into  his  wide  blue  eyes. 
"And  I  believe  he  meant  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
upon  this  earth,  as  well  as  in  the  skies." 

March  threw  himself  back  in  his  chair  and  looked 
at  him  with  a  kind  of  stupetaction,  in  which  his 
eye  wandered  to  the  doorway,  where  he  saw  Fulker- 
son  standing,  it  seemed  to  him  a  long  time,  before 
he  heard  him  saying,  "  Hello,  hello !  What 's  the 
row?  Conrad  pitching  into  you  on  old  Lindau's 
account,  too  ? " 

The  young  man  turned,  and  after  a  glance  at 
Fulkerson's  light,  smiling  face,  went  out,  as  if  in  his 
present  mood  he  could  not  bear  the  contact  of  that 
persiflant  spirit. 

March  felt  himself  getting  provisionally  very 
angry  again.  "Excuse  me,  Fulkerson,  but  did  you 
know  when  you  went  out  what  Mr.  Dryfoos  wanted 
to  see  me  for  ? " 

"Well,  no,  I  didn't  exactly,"  said  Fulkerson, 
taking  his  usual  seat  on  a  chair,  and  looking  over 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        135 

the  back  of  it  at  March.  "  I  saw  he  was  on  his  ear 
about  something,  and  I  thought  I'd  better  not 
monkey  with  him  much.  I  supposed  he  was  going 
to  bring  you  to  book  about  old  Lindau,  somehow." 
Fulkerson  broke  into  a  laugh. 

March  remained  serious.  "Mr.  Dryfoos,"  he 
said,  willing  to  let  the  simple  statement  have  its  own 
weight  with  Fulkerson,  and  nothing  more,  "  came 
in  here  and  ordered  me  to  discharge  Lindau  from 
his  employment  on  the  magazine — to  turn  him  off, 
as  he  put  it." 

"  Did  he  ? "  asked  Fulkerson,  with  unbroken  cheer- 
fulness. "  The  old  man  is  business,  every  time.  Well, 
I  suppose  you  can  easily  get  somebody  else  to  do 
Lindau's  work  for  you.  This  town  is  just  running 
over  with  half -starved  linguists.  What  did  you 
say  ? " 

"  What  did  I  say  ? "  March  echoed.  "  Look  here, 
Fulkerson  ;  you  may  regard  this  as  a  joke,  but  / 
don't.  I  'm  not  used  to  being  spoken  to  as  if  I  were 
the  foreman  of  a  shop,  and  told  to  discharge  a  sen- 
sitive and  cultivated  man  like  Lindau,  as  if  he 
were  a  drunken  mechanic;  and  if  that's  your  idea 
of  me " 

"  Oh,  hello,  now,  March  !  You  mustn't  mind  the 
old  man's  way.  He  don't  mean  anything  by  it — he 
don't  know  any  better,  if  you  come  to  that." 

"  Then  /  know  better,"  said  March.  "  I  refused 
to  receive  any  instructions  from  Mr.  Dryfoos,  whom, 
I  don't  know  in  my  relations  with  Every  Other  Week> 
and  I  referred  him  to  you."  ' 


136  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  You  did  ? "  Fulkerson  whistled.  "  He  owns  the 
thing  ! " 

"  I  don't  care  who  owns  the  thing,"  said  March. 
"My  negotiations  were  with  you  alone  from  the 
beginning,  and  I  leave  this  matter  with  you.  What 
do  you  wish  done  about  Lindau  ?  " 

"Oh,  better  let  the  old  fool  drop,"  said  Fulkerson. 
"  He  '11  light  on  his  feet  somehow,  and  it  will  save 
a  lot  of  rumpus." 

"  And  if  I  decline  to  let  him  drop  ?  " 

"Oh,  come,  now,  March;  don't  do  that,"  Fulker- 
son began. 

"  If  I  decline  to  let  him  drop,"  March  repeated, 
"  what  will  you  do  ? " 

"  I  '11  be  dogged  if  I  know  what  I  '11  do,"  said  Ful- 
kerson. "  I  hope  you  won't  take  that  stand.  If  the 
old  man  went  so  far  as  to  speak  to  you  about  it,  his 
mind  is  made  up,  and  we  might  as  well  knock  under 
first  as  last." 

"And  do  you  mean  to  say  that  you  would  not 
stand  by  me  in  what  I  considered  my  duty — in  a 
matter  of  principle  2 " 

"Why,  of  course,  March,"  said  Fulkerson  coax- 
ingly,  "  I  mean  to  do  the  right  thing.  But  Dryfoos 
owns  the  magazine " 

" He  doesn't  own  me"  said  March,  rising.  " He 
has  made  the  little  mistake  of  speaking  to  me  as  if 
he  did ;  and  when" —  March  put  on  his  hat  and  took 
his  overcoat  down  from  its  nail — "  when  you  bring 
me  his  apologies,  or  come  to  say  that,  having  failed 
to  make  him  understand  they  were  necessary,  you 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        137 

are  prepared  to  stand  by  me,  I  will  come  back  to 
this  desk.  Otherwise  my  resignation  is  at  your 
service." 

He  started  toward  the  door,  and  Fulkerson  inter- 
cepted him.  "  Ah,  now,  look  here,  March !  Don't 
do  that !  Hang  it  all,  don't  you  see  where  it  leaves 
me  1  Now,  you  just  sit  down  a  minute,  and  talk  it 

over.  I  can  make  you  see — I  can  show  you . 

Why,  confound  the  old  Dutch  beer-buzzer  !  Twenty 
of  him  wouldn't  be  worth  the  trouble  he  's  makin'. 
Let  him  go,  and  the  old  man  '11  come  round  in  time.'r 

"I  don't  think  we've  understood  each  other 
exactly,  Mr.  Fulkerson,"  said  March,  very  haughtily. 
"  Perhaps  we  never  can ;  but  I  '11  leave  you  to  think 
it  out." 

He  pushed  on,  and  Fulkerson  stood  aside  to  let 
him  pass,  with  a  dazed  look  and  a  mechanical  move- 
ment. There  was  something  comic  in  his  rueful 
bewilderment  to  March,  who  was  tempted  to  smile, 
but  he  said  to  himself  that  he  had  as  much  reason 
to  be  unhappy  as  Fulkerson,  and  he  did  not  smile. 
His  indignation  kept  him  hot  in  his  purpose  to 
suffer  any  consequence  rather  than  submit  to  the 
dictation  of  a  man  like  Dryfoos ;  he  felt  keenly  the 
degradation  of  his  connection  with  him,  and  all  his 
resentment  of  Fulkerson's  original  un candour  re- 
turned ;  at  the  same  time  his  heart  ached  with  fore- 
boding. It  was  not  merely  the  work  in  which  he 
had  constantly  grown  happier  that  he  saw  taken 
from  him ;  but  he  felt  the  misery  of  the  man  who 
stakes  the  security  and  plenty  and  peace  of  home 


138        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

upon  some  cast,  and  knows  that  losing  will  sweep 
from  him  most  that  most  men  find  sweet  and 
pleasant  in  life.  He  faced  the  fact,  which  no  good 
man  can  front  without  terror,  that  he  was  risking 
the  support  of  his  family,  and  for  a  point  of  pride, 
of  honour,  which  perhaps  he  had  no  right  to  consider 
in  view  of  the  possible  adversity.  He  realised,  as 
every  hireling  must,  no  matter  how  skilfully  or 
gracefully  the  tie  is  contrived  for  his  wearing,  that 
he  belongs  to  another,  whose  will  is  his  law.  His 
indignation  was  shot  with  abject  impulses  to  go 
back  and  tell  Fulkerson  that  it  was  all  right,  and 
that  he  gave  up.  To  end  the  anguish  of  his  struggle 
he  quickened  his  steps,  so  that  he  found  he  was 
reaching  home  almost  at  a  run. 


VIII. 

HE  must  have  made  more  clatter  than  he  sup- 
posed with  his  key  at  the  apartment  door,  for  his 
wife  had  come  to  let  him  in  when  he  flung  it  open. 
"  Why,  Basil,"  she  said,  "  what 's  brought  you  back  ? 
Are  you  sick  1  You  're  all  pale.  Well,  no  wonder  ! 
This  is  the  last  of  Mr.  Fulkerson's  dinners  you  shall 
go  to.  You  're  not  strong  enough  for  it,  and  your 
stomach  will  be  all  out  of  order  for  a  week.  How 
hot  you  are  !  and  in  a  drip  of  perspiration  !  Now 
you'll  be  sick."  She  took  his  hat  away,  which  hung 
dangling  in  his  hand,  and  pushed  him  into  a  chair 
with  tender  impatience.  "What  is  the  matter? 
Has  anything  happened  ? " 

"  Everything  has  happened,"  he  said,  getting  his 
voice  after  one  or  two  husky  endeavours  for  it ;  and 
then  he  poured  out  a  confused  and  huddled  state- 
ment of  the  case,  from  which  she  only  got  at  the 
situation  by  prolonged  cross-questioning. 

At  the  end  she  said,  "  I  knew  Lindau  would  get 
you  into  trouble." 

This  cut  March  to  the  heart.  "  Isabel ! "  he  cried 
reproachfully. 

"  Oh,  I  know,"  she  retorted,  and  the  tears  began 


140       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

to  come.  "  I  don't  wonder  you  didn't  want  to  say 
much  to  me  about  that  dinner  at  breakfast.  I  noticed 
it ;  but  I  thought  you  were  just  dull,  and  so  I  didn't 
insist.  I  wish  I  had,  now.  If  you  had  told  me  what 
Lindau  had  said,  I  should  have  known  what  would 
have  come  of  it,  and  I  could  have  advised  you " 

"  Would  you  have  advised  me,"  March  demanded 
curiously,  "  to  submit  to  bullying  like  that,  and 
meekly  consent  to  commit  an  act  of  cruelty  against 
a  man  who  had  once  been  such  a  friend  to  me  1 " 

"  It  was  an  unlucky  day  when  you  met  him.  I 
suppose  we  shall  have  to  go.  And  just  when  we 
had  got  used  to  New  York,  and  begun  to  like  it. 
I  don't  know  where  we  shall  go  now ;  Boston  isn't 
like  home  any  more ;  and  we  couldn't  live  on  two 
thousand  there  ;  I  should  be  ashamed  to  try.  I  'm 
sure  I  don't  know  where  we  can  live  on  it.  I  sup- 
pose in  some  country  village,  where  there  are  no 
schools,  or  anything  for  the  children.  I  don't  know 
what  they'll  say  when  we  tell  them,  poor  things." 

Every  word  was  a  stab  in  March's  heart,  so  weakly 
tender  to  his  own;  his  wife's  tears,  after  so  much 
experience  of  the  comparative  lightness  of  the  griefs 
that  weep  themselves  out  in  women,  always  seemed 
wrung  from  his  own  soul ;  if  his  children  suffered  in 
the  least  through  him,  he  felt  like  a  murderer.  It 
was  far  worse  than  he  could  have  imagined,  the  way 
his  wife  took  the  affair,  though  he  had  imagined 
certain  words,  or  perhaps  only  looks,  from  her  that 
were  bad  enough.  He  had  allowed  for  trouble, 
but  trouble  on  his  account :  a  sympathy  that  might 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  141 

burden  and  embarrass  him ;  but  lie  had  not  dreamt 
of  this  merely  domestic,  this  petty,  this  sordid  view 
of  their  potential  calamity,  which  left  him  wholly 
out  of  the  question,  and  embraced  only  what  was 
most  crushing  and  desolating  in  the  prospect.  He 
could  not  bear  it.  He  caught  up  his  hat  again,  ajid 
with  some  hope  that  his  wife  would  try  to  keep  him, 
rushed  out  of  the  house.  He  wandered  aimlessly 
about,  thinking  the  same  exhausting  thoughts  over 
and  over,  till  he  found  himself  horribly  hungry ; 
then  he  went  into  a  restaurant  for  his  lunch,  and 
when  he  paid,  he  tried  to  imagine  how  he  should 
feel  if  that  were  really  his  last  dollar. 

He  went  home  toward  the  middle  of  the  afternoon, 
basely  hoping  that  Fulkerson  had  sent  him  some 
conciliatory  message,  or  perhaps  was  waiting  there 
for  him  to  talk  it  over ;  March  was  quite  willing  to 
talk  it  over  now.  But  it  was  his  wife  who  again  met 
him  at  the  door,  though  it  seemed  another  woman 
than  the  one  he  had  left  weeping  in  the  morning. 

"  I  told  the  children,"  she  said,  in  smiling  ex- 
planation of  his  absence  from  lunch,  "  that  perhaps 
you  were  detained  by  business.  I  didn't  know  but 
you  had  gone  back  to  the  office." 

"  Did  you  think  I  would  go  back  there,  Isabel  ? " 
asked  March,  with  a  haggard  look.  "  Well,  if  you 
say  so,  I  will  go  back,  and  do  what  Dryfoos  ordered 
me  to  do.  I  'm  sufficiently  cowed  between  him  and 
you,  I  can  assure  you." 

"  Nonsense,"  she  said.  "  I  approve  of  everything 
you  did.  But  sit  down,  now,  and  don't  keep  walk- 


142  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

ing  that  way,  and  let  me  see  if  I  understand  it  per- 
fectly. Of  course  I  had  to  have  my  say  out." 

She  made  him  go  all  over  his  talk  with  Dryfoos 
again,  and  report  his  own  language  precisely.  From 
time  to  time,  as  she  got  his  points,  she  said,  "  That 
was  splendid,"  "  Good  enough  for  him  ! "  And  "  Oh, 
I  'm  so  glad  you  said  that  to  him  ! "  At  the  end  she 
said,  "  Well,  now,  let 's  look  at  it  from  his  point  of 
view.  Let 's  be  perfectly  just  to  him  before  we  take 
another  step  forward." 

"  Or  backward,"  March  suggested  ruefully.  "  The 
case  is  simply  this  :  he  owns  the  magazine." 

"  Of  course." 

"And  he  has  a  right  to  expect  that  I  will  con- 
sider his  pecuniary  interests " 

"  Oh,  those  detestable  pecuniary  interests  !  Don't 
you  wish  there  wasn't  any  money  in  the  world  ? " 

"  Yes ;  or  else  that  there  was  a  great  deal  more 
of  it — And  I  was  perfectly  willing  to  do  that.  I 
have  always  kept  that  in  mind  as  one  of  my  duties 
to  him,  ever  since  I  understood  what  his  relation  to 
the  magazine  was." 

"  Yes,  I  can  bear  witness  to  that  in  any  court  of 
justice.  You  've  done  it  a  great  deal  more  than  I 
could,  Basil.  And  it  was  just  the  same  way  with 
those  horrible  insurance  people." 

"I  know,"  March  went  on,  trying  to  be  proof 
against  her  flatteries,  or  at  least  to  look  as  if  he  did 
not  deserve  praise  ;  "  I  know  that  what  Lindau  said 
was  offensive  to  him,  and  I  can  understand  how  he 
felt  that  he  had  a  right  to  punish  it.  All  I  say  is 
that  he  had  no  right  to  punish  it  through  me." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  143 

"  Yes,"  said  Mrs.  March  askingly. 

"If  it  had  been  a  question  of  making  Every  Other 
Week  the  vehicle  of  Lindau's  peculiar  opinions — 
though  they  're  not  so  very  peculiar ;  he  might  have 
got  the  most  of  them  out  of  liuskin — I  shouldn't 
have  had  any  ground  to  stand  on,  or  at  least  then  I 
should  have  had  to  ask  myself  whether  his  opinions 
would  be  injurious  to  the  magazine  or  not." 

"I  don't  see,"  Mrs.  March  interpolated,  "how 
they  could  hurt  it  much  worse  than  Colonel  Wood- 
burn's  article  crying  up  slavery." 

"  Well,"  said  March  impartially,  "  we  could  print 
a  dozen  articles  praising  the  slavery  it 's  impossible 
to  have  back,  and  it  wouldn't  hurt  us.  But  if  we 
printed  one  paper  against  the  slavery  which  Lindau 
claims  still  exists,  some  people  would  call  us  bad 
names,  and  the  counting-room  would  begin  to  feel  it. 
But  that  isn't  the  point.  Lindau's  connection  with 
Every  Other  Week  is  almost  purely  mechanical ;  he 's 
merely  a  translator  of  such  stories  and  sketches 
as  he  first  submits  to  me,  and  it  isn't  at  all  a  ques- 
tion of  his  opinions  hurting  us,  but  of  my  becom- 
ing an  agent  to  punish  him  for  his  opinions.  That 
is  what  I  wouldn't  do;  that's  what  I  never  will 
do." 

"  If  you  did,"  said  his  wife,  "  I  should  perfectly 
despise  you.  I  didn't  understand  how  it  was  before. 
I  thought  you  were  just  holding  out  against  Dryfoos 
because  he  took  a  dictatorial  tone  with  you,  and 
because  you  wouldn't  recognise  his  authority.  But 
now  I  'm  with  you,  Basil,  every  time,  as  that  horrid 
little  Fulkerson  says.  But  who  would  have  ever 


144  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

supposed  he  would  be  so  base  as  to  side  against 
you?" 

"I  don't  know,"  said  March  thoughtfully,  "that 
we  had  a  right  to  expect  anything  else.  Fulkerson's 
standards  are  low ;  they  're  merely  business  standards, 
and  the  good  that 's  in  him  is  incidental,  and  some- 
thing quite  apart  from  his  morals  and  methods. 
He 's  naturally  a  generous  and  right-minded  creature, 
but  life  has  taught  him  to  truckle  and  trick,  like  the 
rest  of  us." 

"It  hasn't  taught  you  that,  Basil." 

"  Don't  be  so  sure.  Perhaps  it 's  only  that  I  'm 
a  poor  scholar.  But  I  don't  know,  really,  that  I 
despise  Fulkerson  so  much  for  his  course  this  morn- 
ing as  for  his  gross  and  fulsome  flatteries  of  Dryfoos 
last  night.  I  could  hardly  stomach  it." 

His  wife  made  him  tell  her  what  they  were,  and 
then  she  said,  "Yes,  that  was  loathsome;  I  couldn't 
have  believed  it  of  Mr.  Fulkerson." 

"Perhaps  he  only  did  iD  to  keep  the  talk  going, 
and  to  give  the  old  man  a  chance  to  say  something," 
March  leniently  suggested.  "  It  was  a  worse  effect 
because  he  didn't  or  couldn't  folloAv  up  Fulkerson's 
lead." 

"  It  was  loathsome,  all  the  same,"  his  wife  insisted. 
"It's  the  end  of  Mr.  Fulkerson,  as  far  as  I'm  con- 
cerned." 

"I  didn't  tell  you  before,"  March  resumed,  after  a 
moment,  "  of  my  little  interview  with  Conrad  Dryfoos 
after  his  father  left,"  and  now  he  went  on  to  repeat 
what  had  passed  between  him  and  the  young  man. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  145 

"  I  suspect  that  he  and  his  father  had  been  having 
aome  words  before  the  old  man  came  up  to  talk  with 
me,  and  that  it  was  that  made  him  so  furious." 

"  Yes,  but  what  a  strange  position  for  the  son  of 
such  a  man  to  take  !  Do  you  suppose  he  says  such 
things  to  his  father  ? " 

"  I  don't  know ;  but  I  suspect  that  in  his  meek 
way  Conrad  would  say  what  he  believed  to  anybody. 
I  suppose  we  must  regard  him  as  a  kind  of  crank." 

"  Poor  young  fellow  !  He  always  makes  me  feel 
sad  somehow.  He  has  such  a  pathetic  face.  I  don't 
believe  I  ever  saw  him  look  quite  happy,  except  that 
night  at  Mrs.  Horn's,  when  he  was  talking  with  Miss 
Vance  ;  and  then  he  made  me  feel  sadder  than  ever." 

"  I  don't  envy  him  the  life  he  leads  at  home,  with 
those  convictions  of  his.  I  don't  see  why  it  wouldn't 
be  as  tolerable  there  for  old  Lindau  himself." 

"  Well,  now,"  said  Mrs.  March,  "  let  us  put  them 
all  out  of  our  minds  and  see  what  we  are  going  to 
do  ourselves." 

They  began  to  consider  their  wa}rs  and  means, 
and  how  and  where  they  should  live,  in  view  of 
March's  severance  of  his  relations  with  Every  Other 
Week,  They  had  not  saved  anything  from  the  first 
year's  salary ;  they  had  only  prepared  to  save  : 
and  they  had  nothing  solid  but  their  two  thousand 
to  count  upon.  But  they  built  a  future  in  which 
they  easily  lived  on  that  and  on  what  March  earned 
with  his  pen.  He  became  a  free  lance,  and  fought 
in  whatever  cause  he  thought  just ;  he  had  no  ties, 
no  chains.  They  went  back  to  Boston  Avith  the 
VOL.  II.— 7 


146  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

heroic  will  to  do  what  was  most  distasteful ;  they 
would  have  returned  to  their  own  house  if  they 
had  not  rented  it  again ;  but,  any  rate,  Mrs.  March 
helped  out  by  taking  boarders,  or  perhaps  only 
letting  rooms  to  lodgers.  They  had  some  hard 
struggles,  but  they  succeeded. 

"  The  great  thing,"  she  said,  "  is  to  be  right.  I  'm 
ten  times  as  happy  as  if  you  had  come  home  and 
told  me  that  you  had  consented  to  do  what  Dryfoos 
asked,  and  he  had  doubled  your  salary." 

"  I  don't  think  that  would  have  happened  in  any 
event,"  said  March  dryly. 

"  Well,  no  matter.    I  just  used  it  for  an  example." 

They  both  experienced  a  buoyant  relief,  such  as 
seems  to  come  to  people  who  begin  life  anew  on 
whatever  terms.  "  I  hope  we  are  young  enough  yet, 
Basil,"  she  said,  and  she  would  not  have  it  when  he 
said  they  had  once  been  younger. 

They  heard  the  children's  knock  on  the  door ; 
they  knocked  when  they  came  home  from  school  so 
that  their  mother  might  let  them  in.  "  Shall  we 
tell  them  at  once  1 "  she  asked,  and  ran  to  open  for 
them  before  March  could  answer. 

They  were  not  alone.  Fulkerson,  smiling  from 
ear  to  ear,  was  with  them.  "  Is  March  in  ? "  he 
asked. 

"  Mr.  March  is  at  home,  yes,"  she  said  very 
haughtily.  "  He 's  in  his  study,"  and  she  led  the 
way  there,  while  the  children  went  to  their  rooms. 

"  Well,  March,"  Fulkerson  called  out  at  sight  of 
him,  "  it 's  all  right !  The  old  man  has  come  down." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        147 

"  I  suppose  if  you  gentlemen  are  going  to  talk 
business "  Mrs.  March  began. 

"  Oh,  we  don't  want  you  to  go  away,"  said  Ful- 
kerson.  "  I  reckon  March  has  told  you,  anyway." 

"Yes,  I've  told  her,"  said  March.  "Don't  go, 
Isabel.  What  do  you  mean,  Fulkerson  ? " 

"  He 's  just  gone  on  up  home,  and  he  sent  me 
round  with  his  apologies.  He  sees  now  that  he  had 
no  business  to  speak  to  you  as  he  did,  and  he  with- 
draws everything.  He  'd  'a'  come  round  himself  if 
I  'd  said  so,  but  I  told  him  I  could  make  it  all  right." 

Fulkerson  looked  so  happy  in  having  the  whole 
affair  put  right,  and  the  Marches  knew  him  to  be 
so  kindly  affected  toward  them  that  they  could  not 
refuse  for  the  moment  to  share  his  mood.  They 
felt  themselves  slipping  down  from  the  moral  height 
which  they  had  gained,  and  March  made  a  clutch  to 
stay  himself  with  the  question,  "  And  Lindau  1 " 

"Well,"  said  Fulkersou,  "he's  going  to  leave 
Lindau  to  me.  You  won't  have  anything  to  do 
with  it.  I  '11  let  the  old  fellow  down  easy." 

"Do  you  mean,"  asked  March,  "  that  Mr.  Dryfoos 
insists  on  his  being  dismissed  ? " 

"Why,  there  isn't  any  dismissing  about  it,"  Ful- 
kerson argued.  "  If  you  don't  send  him  any  more 
work,  he  won't  do  any  more,  that's  all.  Or  if  he 
comes  round  you  can He 's  to  be  referred  to  me.!> 

March  shook  his  head,  and  his  wife,  with  a  sigh, 

felt  herself  plucked  up  from  the  soft  circumstance  of 

their  lives,  which  she  had  sunk  back  into  so  quickly, 

and  set  beside  him  on  that  cold  peak  of  principle 

21 


148  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

again.  "It  won't  do,  Fulkerson.  It's  very  good  of 
you  and  all  that,  but  it  comes  to  the  same  thing  in 
the  end.  I  could  have  gone  on  without  any  apology 
from  Mr.  Dryfoos ;  he  transcended  his  authority, 
but  that 's  a  minor  matter.  I  could  have  excused  it 
to  his  ignorance  of  life  among  gentlemen;  but  I 
can't  consent  to  Lindau's  dismissal — it  comes  to  that, 
whether  you  do  it  or  I  do  it,  and  whether  it's  a 
positive  or  a  negative  thing — because  he  holds  this 
opinion  or  that." 

"But  don't  you  see,"  said  Fulkerson,  "that  it's 
just  Lindau's  opinions  the  old  man  can't  stand  1  He 
hasn't  got  anything  against  him  personally.  I  don't 
suppose  there  's  anybody  that  appreciates  Lindau  in 
some  ways  more  than  the  old  man  does." 

"  I  understand.  He  wants  to  punish  him  for  his 
opinions.  Well,  I  can't  consent  to  that,  directly  or 
indirectly.  We  don't  print  his  opinions,  and  he  has 
a  perfect  right  to  hold  them,  whether  Mr.  Dryfoos 
agrees  with  them  or  not." 

Mrs.  March  had  judged  it  decorous  for  her  to  say 
nothing,  but  she  now  went  and  sat  down  in  the 
chair  next  her  husband. 

"  Ah,  dog  on  it ! "  cried  Fulkerson,  rumpling  his 
hair  with  both  his  hands.  ''  What  am  I  to  do  1 
The  old  man  says  he 's  got  to  go." 

"  And  I  don't  consent  to  his  going,"  said  March, 

"  And  you  won't  stay  if  he  goes  1 " 

"  I  won't  stay  if  he  goes." 

Fulkerson  rose.  "Well,  well!  I've  got  to  see 
about  it.  I  'm  afraid  the  old  man  won't  stand  it, 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  149 

March ;  I  am,  indeed.  I  wish  you  'd  reconsider.  I 
— I  'd  take  it  as  a  personal  favour  if  you  would.  It 
leaves  me  iu  a  fix.  You  see  I  've  got  to  side  with 
one  or  the  other." 

March  made  no  reply  to  this,  except  to  say,  "  Yes, 
you  must  stand  by  him,  or  you  must  stand  by  me." 

"  Well,  well !  Hold  on  a  while  !  I  '11  see  you  in 
the  morning.  Don't  take  any  steps " 

"  Oh,  there  are  no  steps  to  take,"  said  March,  with 
a  melancholy  smile.  "  The  steps  are  stopped ; 
that's  all."  He  sank  back  into  his  chair  when  Ful- 
kerson  was  gone,  and  drew  a  long  breath.  "  This 
is  pretty  rough.  I  thought  we  had  got  through  it." 

"No,"  said  his  wife.  "It  seems  as  if  I  had  to 
make  the  fight  all  over  again." 

"  Well,  it 's  a  good  thing  it 's  a  holy  war." 

"  I  can't  bear  the  suspense.  Why  didn't  you  tell 
him  outright  you  wouldn't  go  back  on  any  terms  I " 

"  I  might  as  well,  and  got  the  glory.  He  '11  never 
move  Dryfoos.  I  suppose  we  both  would  like  to  go 
back,  if  we  could." 

"Oh,  I  suppose  so." 

They  could  not  regain  their  lost  exaltation,  their 
lost  dignity.  At  dinner  Mrs.  March  asked  the 
children  how  they  would  like  to  go  back  to  Boston 
to  live. 

"  Why,  we  're  not  going,  are  we  ? "  asked  Tom 
without  enthusiasm. 

"I  was  just  wondering  how  you  felt  about  it, 
now,"  she  said,  with  an  underlook  at  her  husband. 

"Well,  if   we  go  back,"  said  Bella,   "I  want  to 


150  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

live  on  the  Back  Bay.  It 's  awfully  Micky  at  the 
South  End." 

"  I  suppose  I  should  go  to  Harvard,"  said  Tom, 
"  and  I  'd  room  out  at  Cambridge.  It  would  be 
easier  to  get  at  you  on  the  Back  Bay." 

The  parents  smiled  ruefully  at  each  other,  and  in 
view  of  these  grand  expectations  of  his  children, 
March  resolved  to  go  as  far  as  he  could  in  meeting 
Dryfoos's  wishes.  He  proposed  the  theatre  as  a 
distraction  from  the  anxieties  that  he  knew  were 
pressing  equally  on  his  wife.  "  We  might  go  to  the 
Old  Homestead,"  he  suggested,  with  a  sad  irony, 
which  only  his  wife  felt. 

"Oh  yes,  let's!"  cried  Bella. 

While  they  were  getting  ready,  some  one  rang, 
and  Bella  went  to  the  door,  and  then  came  to  tell 
her  father  that  it  was  Mr.  Lindau.  "  He  says  he 
wants  to  see  you  just  a  moment.  He's  in  the 
parlour,  and  he  won't  sit  down,  or  anything." 

"  What  can  he  want  1 "  groaned  Mrs.  March, 
from  their  common  dismay. 

March  apprehended  a  storm  in  the  old  man's  face. 
But  he  only  stood  in  the  middle  of  the  room,  looking 
very  sad  and  grave.  "  You  are  coing  oudt,"  he 
said.  "  I  won't  geep  you  long.  I  haf  gome  to  pring 
pack  dose  macassines,  and  dis  mawney.  I  can't  do 
any  more  voark  for  you ;  and  I  can't  geep  the 
mawney  you  haf  baid  me  a'ready.  It  iss  not  hawnest 
mawney — that  hass  been  oarned  py  voark ;  it  iss 
mawney  that  hass  peen  male  py  sbeculation,  and  the 
obbression  off  lapour,  and  the  necessity  of  the  boor, 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  151 

py  a  man .  Here  it  is,  efery  tollar,  efery  zent. 

Dake  it ;  I  feel  as  if  dere  vas  ploodt  on  it." 

"  Why,  Lindau,"  March  began,  but  the  old  man 
interrupted  him. 

"  Ton't  dalk  to  me,  Passil !  I  could  not  haf 
believedt  it  of  yon.  When  you  know  how  I  feel 
about  dose  tings,  why  tidn't  you  dell  me  wfiose 
mawney  you  bay  oudt  to  me  ?  Ach,  I  ton't  plame 
you — I  ton't  rebroach  you.  You  haf  nefer  thought 
of  it ;  boat  I — /  have  thought,  and  I  should  be 
cuilty,  I  must  share  that  man's  cuilt,  if  I  gept  hiss 
mawney.  If  you  hat  toldt  me  at  the  peginning — if 
you  hat  peen  frank  with  me — boat  it  iss  all  righdt ; 
you  can  go  on ;  you  ton't  see  dese  tings  as  I  see 
them;  and  you  haf  cot  a  family,  and  I  am  a  free 
man.  I  voark  to  myself,  and  when  I  don't  voark, 
I  sdarfe  to  myself.  But  I  geep  my  handts  glean, 
voark  or  sdarfe.  Gif  him  hiss  mawney  pack  !  I  am 
sawry  for  him ;  I  would  not  hoart  hiss  feelings,  boat 
I  could  not  pear  to  douch  him,  and  hiss  mawney  iss 
like  boison ! " 

March  tried  to  reason  with  Lindau,  to  show  him 
the  folly,  the  injustice,  the  absurdity  of  his  course ; 
it  ended  in  their  both  getting  angry,  and  in  Lindau's 
going  away  in  a  whirl  of  German  that  included  Basil 
in  the  guilt  of  the  man  whom  Lindau  called  his 
master. 

"Well,"  said  Mrs.  March.  "He  is  a  crank,  and 
I  think  you  're  well  rid  of  him.  Now  you  have  no 
quarrel  with  that  horrid  old  Dryfoos,  and  you  can 
keep  right  on." 


152  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"Yes,"  said  March,  "I  wish  it  didn't  make  me 
feel  so  sneaking.  What  a  long  day  it 's  been  !  It 
seems  like  a  century  since  I  got  up." 

"Yes,  a  thousand  years.  Is  there  anything  else 
left  to  happen?" 

"  I  hope  not     I  'd  like  to  go  to  bed." 

"Why,  aren't  you  going  to  the  theatre?"  wailed 
Bella,  coming  in  upon  her  father's  desperate  ex- 
pression. 

"  The  theatre  ?  Oh  yes,  certainly  !  I  meant 
after  we  got  home,"  and  March  amused  himself  at 
the  puzzled  countenance  of  the  child.  "  Come  on ! 
Is  Tom  ready  1 " 


VIII. 

FULKERSON  parted  with  the  Marches  in  such 
trouble  of  mind  that  he  did  not  feel  able  to  meet 
that  night  the  people  whom  he  usually  kept  so  gay 
at  Mrs.  Leighton's  table.  He  went  to  Maroni's  for 
his  dinner,  for  this  reason,  and  for  others  more 
obscure.  He  could  not  expect  to  do  anything  more 
with  Dryfoos  at  once ;  he  knew  that  Dryfoos  must 
feel  that  he  had  already  made  an  extreme  concession 
to  March,  and  he  believed  that  if  he  was  to  get  any- 
thing more  from  him  it  must  be  after  Dryfoos  had 
dined.  But  he  was  not  without  the  hope,  vague 
and  indefinite  as  it  might  be,  that  he  should  find 
Lindau  at  Maroni's,  and  perhaps  should  get  some 
concession  from  him,  some  word  of  regret  or  apology 
which  he  could  report  to  Dryfoos,  and  at  least  make 
the  means  of  reopening  the  affair  with  him ;  perhaps 
Lindau,  when  he  knew  how  matters  stood,  would 
back  down  altogether,  and  for  March's  sake  would 
withdraw  from  all  connection  with  Every  Other  Week 
himself,  and  so  leave  everything  serene.  Fulkerson 
felt  capable,  in  his  desperation,  of  delicately  suggest- 
ing such  a  course  to  Lindau,  or  even  of  plainly 
advising  it :  he  did  not  care  for  Lindau  a  great 
7* 


154  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

deal,  and  he  did  care  a  great  deal  for  the 
magazine. 

But  he  did  not  find  Lindau  at  Maroni's ;  he  only 
found  Beaton.  He  sat  looking  at  the  doorway  as 
Fulkerson  entered,  and  Fulkerson  naturally  came 
and  took  a  place  at  his  table.  Something  in 
Beaton's  large-eyed  solemnity  of  aspect  invited  Ful- 
kerson to  confidence,  and  he  said,  as  he  pulled  his 
napkin  open  and  strung  it,  still  a  little  damp  (as  the 
scanty,  often-washed  linen  at  Maroni's  was  apt  to 
be),  across  his  knees,  "I  was  looking  for  you  this 
morning,  to  talk  with  you  about  the  Christmas 
number,  and  I  was  a  good  deal  worked  up  because  I 
couldn't  find  you ;  but  I  guess  I  might  as  well  have 
spared  myself  my  emotions." 

"Why  ?"  asked  Beaton  briefly. 

"  Well,  I  don't  know  as  there 's  going  to  be  any 
Christmas  number." 

"  Why  1 "  Beaton  asked  again. 

"  Row  between  the  financial  angel  and  the  literary 
editor  about  the  chief  translator  and  polyglot  smeller." 

"  Lindau  ? " 

"Lindau  is  his  name." 

"  What  does  the  literary  editor  expect  after 
Lindau 's  expression  of  his  views  last  night  1 " 

"  I  don't  know  what  he  expected,  but  the  ground 
he  took  with  the  old  man  was  that  as  Lindau's 
opinions  didn't  characterise  his  work  on  the  maga- 
zine he  would  not  be  made  the  instrument  of 
punishing  him  for  them :  the  old  man  wanted  him 
turned  off,  as  he  calls  it." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  155 

"Seems  to  be  pretty  good  ground,"  said  Beaton 
impartially,  while  he  speculated,  with  a  dull  trouble 
at  heart,  on  the  effect  the  row  would  have  on  his 
own  fortunes.  His  late  visit  home  had  made  him 
feel  that  the  claim  of  his  family  upon  him  for  some 
repayment  of  help  given  could  not  be  much  longer 
delayed ;  with  his  mother  sick  and  his  father  grow- 
ing old,  he  must  begin  to  do  something  for  them, 
but  up  to  this  time  he  had  spent  his  salary  even 
faster  than  he  had  earned  it :  when  Fulkerson  came 
in  he  was  wondering  whether  he  could  get  him  to 
increase  it,  if  he  threatened  to  give  up  his  work, 
and  he  wished  that  he  was  enough  in  love  with 
Margaret  Vance,  or  even  Christine  Dryfoos,  to 
marry  her,  only  to  end  in  the  sorrowful  conviction 
that  he  was  really  in  love  with  Alma  Leighton,  who 
had  no  money,  and  who  had  apparently  no  wish  to 
be  married  for  love,  even.  "And  what  are  you 
going  to  do  about  it  ? "  he  asked  listlessly. 

"  Be  dogged  if  I  know  what  I  'm  going  to  do  about 
it,"  said  Fulkerson.  "  I  've  been  round  all  day,  trying 
to  pick  up  the  pieces — row  began  right  after  break- 
fast this  morning — and  one  time  I  thought  I  'd  got 
the  thing  all  put  together  again.  I  got  the  old  man 
to  say  that  he  had  spoken  to  March  a  little  too 
authoritatively  about  Lindau ;  that  in  fact  he  ought 
to  have  communicated  his  wishes  through  me ;  and 
that  he  was  willing  to  have  me  get  rid  of  Lindau, 
and  March  needn't  have  anything  to  do  with  it. 
I  thought  that  was  pretty  white,  but  March  says  the 
apologies  and  regrets  are  all  well  enough  in  their 


156  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

way,  but  they  leave  the  main  question  where  they 
found  it." 

"  What  is  the  main  question  1 "  Beaton  asked, 
pouring  himself  out  some  Chianti ;  as  he  set  the 
flask  down  he  made  the  reflection  that  if  he  would 
drink  water  instead  of  Chianti  he  could  send  his 
father  three  dollars  a  week,  on  his  back  debts,  and 
he  resolved  to  do  it. 

"  The  main  question,  as  March  looks  at  it,  is  the 
question  of  punishing  Lindau  for  his  private 
opinions ;  he  says  that  if  he  consents  to  my  bounc- 
ing the  old  fellow  it 's  the  same  as  if  he  bounced  him." 

"  It  might  have  that  complexion  in  some  lights," 
said  Beaton.  He  drank  off  his  Chianti,  and  thought 
he  would  have  it  twice  a  week,  or  make  Maroni 
keep  the  half-bottles  over  for  him,  and  send  his  father 
two  dollars.  '•  And  what  are  you  going  to  do  now  ? " 

"  That 's  what  I  don't  know,"  said  Fulkeraon 
ruefully.  After  a  moment  he  said  desperately, 
"  Beaton,  you  've  got  a  pretty  good  head ;  why 
don't  you  suggest  something  ? " 

"Why  don't  you  let  March  go  ?"  Beaton  suggested. 

"  Ah,  I  couldn't,"  said  Fulkerson.  "  I  got  him  to 
break-up  in  Boston  and  come  here;  I  -like  him; 
nobody  else  could  get  the  hang  of  the  thing  like  he 
has ;  he  's — a  friend."  Fulkerson  said  this  with  the 
nearest  approach  he  could  make  to  seriousness, 
which  was  a  kind  of  unhappiness. 

Beaton  shrugged.  "  Oh,  if  you  can  afford  to  have 
deals,  I  congratulate  you.  They  're  too  expensive  for 
me.  Then,  suppose  you  get  rid  of  Dryfoos  1 " 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  157 

Fulkerson  laughed  forlornly.  "  Go  on,  Bildad. 
Like  to  sprinkle  a  few  ashes  over  my  boils  1  Don't 
mind  me  \ " 

They  both  sat  silent  a  little  Avhile,  and  then 
Beaton  said,  "  I  suppose  you  haven't  seen  Dryfoos 
the  second  time  ?" 

"  Xo.  I  came  in  here  to  gird  up  my  loins  with 
a  little  dinner  before  I  tackled  him,  But  something 
seems  to  be  the  matter  with  Maroni's  cook.  /  don't 
want  anything  to  eat." 

"The  cooking's  about  as  bad  as  usual,"  said 
Beaton.  After  a  moment,  he  added  ironically,  for 
he  found  Fulkerson's  misery  a  kind  of  relief  from 
his  own,  and  was  willing  to  protract  it  as  long  as  it 
was  amusing  :  "  Why  not  try  an  envoy  extraordinary 
and  minister  plenipotentiary  ? " 

"  What  do  you  mean  ? " 

"  Get  that  other  old  fool  to  go  to  Dryfoos  for  you !" 

"  Which  other  old  fool  ?  The  old  fools  seem  to 
be  as  thick  as  flies." 

"  That  Southern  one." 

"Colonel  Woodburn  ?" 

"  Mmmmm." 

"  He  did  seem  to  rather  take  to  the  colonel ! " 
Fulkerson  mused  aloud. 

"  Of  course  he  did.  Woodburn,  with  his  idiotic 
talk  about  patriarchal  slavery,  is  the  man  on  horse- 
back to  Dryfoos's  muddy  imagination.  He  'd  listen 
to  him  abjectly,  and  he'd  do  whatever  Woodburn 
told  him  to  do."  Beaton  smiled  cynically. 

Fulkerson  got  up  and  reached  for  his  coat  and 


158       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

hat.  "You've  struck  it,  old  man."  The  waiter 
came  up  to  help  him  on  with  his  coat ;  Fulkerson 
slipped  a  dollar  in  his  hand.  "  Never  mind  the 
coat ;  you  can  give  the  rest  of  my  dinner  to  the 
poor,  Paolo.  Beaton,  shake  !  You  Ve  saved  my 
life,  little  boy,  though  I  don't  think  you  meant  it." 
He  took  Beaton's  hand  and  solemnly  pressed  it,  and 
then  almost  ran  out  of  the  door. 

They  had  just  reached  coffee  at  Mrs.  Leighton's 
when  he  arrived,  and  sat  down  with  them,  and 
began  to  put  some  of  the  life  of  his  new  hope  into 
them.  His  appetite  revived,  and  after  protesting 
that  he  would  not  take  anything  but  coffee,  he  went 
back  and  ate  some  of  the  earlier  courses.  But  with 
the  pressure  of  his  purpose  driving  him  forward,  he 
did  not  conceal  from  Miss  Woodburn,  at  least,  that 
he  was  eager  to  get  her  apart  from  the  rest  for 
some  reason.  When  he  accomplished  this,  it  seemed 
as  if  he  had  contrived  it  all  himself,  but  perhaps  he 
had  not  wholly  contrived  it. 

"  I  'm  so  glad  to  get  a  chance  to  speak  to  you 
alone,"  he  said  at  once ;  and  while  she  waited  for 
the  next  word  he  made  a  pause,  and  then  said 
desperately,  "  I  want  you  to  help  me ;  and  if  you 
can't  help  me,  there 's  no  help  for  me." 

"  Mah  goodness,"  she  said,  "  is  the  case  so  bad  as 
that  ?  What  in  the  woald  is  the  trouble  1 " 

"  Yes,  it 's  a  bad  case,"  said  Fulkerson.  "  I  want 
your  father  to  help  me." 

"  Oh,  I  thoat  you  said  me  \ " 

"  Yes ;  I  want  you  to  help  me  with  your  father. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  159 

I  suppose  I  ought  to  go  to  him  at  once,  but  I  'm  a 
little  afraid  of  him." 

"  And  you  awe  not  afraid  of  me  ?  I  don't  think 
that's  very  flattering,  Mr.  Fulkerson.  You  ought 
to  think  Ah  'm  twahce  as  awful  as  papa." 

"  Oh,  I  do  !  You  see,  I  'm  quite  paralysed  be- 
fore you,  and  so  I  don't  feel  anything." 

"  Well,  it 's  a  pretty  lahvely  kyand  of  paralysis. 
But — go  on." 

"I  will— I  will.     If  I  can  only  begin." 

"  Pohaps  Ah  maght  begin  fo'  you." 

"  No,  you  can't.  Lord  knows,  I  'd  like  to  let  you. 
Well,  it 's  like  this." 

Fulkerson  made  a  clutch  at  his  hair,  and  then, 
after  another  hesitation,  he  abruptly  laid  the  whole 
affair  before  her.  He  did  not  think  it  necessary  to 
state  the  exact  nature  of  the  offence  Lindau  had 
given  Dryfoos,  for  he  doubted  if  she  could  grasp  it, 
and  he  was  profuse  of  his  excuses  for  troubling  her 
with  the  matter,  and  of  wonder  at  himself  for  having 
done  so.  In  the  rapture  of  his  concern  at  having 
perhaps  made  a  fool  of  himself,  he  forgot  why  he 
had  told  her ;  but  she  seemed  to  like  having  been 
confided  in,  and  she  said,  "  Well,  Ah  don't  see  what 
you  can  do  with  you'  ahdeals  of  friendship,  except 
stand  bah'  Mr.  Mawch." 

"  My  ideals  of  friendship  ?    What  do  you  mean  ? " 

"  Oh,  don't  you  suppose  we  know  ?  Mr.  Beaton 
said  you  we'  a  pofect  Bahyard  in  friendship,  and 
you  would  sacrifice  anything  to  it." 

"Is  that  so  ?"  said  Fulkerson,  thinking  how  easily 


160  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

he  could  sacrifice  Lindau  in  this  case.  He  had  never 
supposed  before  that  he  was  so  chivalrous  in  such 
matters,  but  he  now  began  to  see  it  in  that  light, 
and  he  wondered  that  he  could  ever  have  entertained 
for  a  moment  the  idea  of  throwing  March  over. 

"  But,  Ah  most  say"  Miss  Woodburn  went  on, 
"  Ah  don't  envy  you  you'  next  interview  with  Mr. 
Dryfoos.  Ah  suppose  you  '11  have  to  see  him  at 
once  aboat  it." 

The  conjecture  recalled  Fulkerson  to  the  object 
of  his  confidences.  "  Ah,  there 's  where  your  help 
comes  in.  I  've  exhausted  all  the  influence  /  have 
with  Dryfoos " 

"  Good  gracious,  you  don't  expect  Ah  could  have 
any ! " 

They  both  laughed  at  the  comic  dismay  with 
which  she  conveyed  the  preposterous  notion ;  and 
Fulkerson  said,  "If  I  judged  from  myself,  I  should 
expect  you  to  bring  him  round  instantly." 

"  Oh,  thank  you,  Mr.  Fulkerson,"  she  said,  with 
mock-meekness. 

"  Not  at  all.  But  it  isn't  Dryfoos  I  want  you  to 
help  me  with  ;  it 's  your  father.  I  want  your  father 
to  interview  Dryfoos  for  me,  and  I — I  'm  afraid  to 
ask  him." 

"  Poo'  Mr.  Fulkerson ! "  she  said,  and  she  in- 
sinuated something  through  her  burlesque  compas- 
sion that  lifted  him  to  the  skies.  He  swore  in  his 
heart  that  the  woman  never  lived  who  was  so  witty, 
so  wise,  so  beautiful,  and  so  good.  "  Come  raght 
with  me  this  minute,  if  the  cy oast's  clea'."  She 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  161 

vrent  to  the  door  of  the  dining-room  and  looked  in 
across  its  gloom  to  the  little  gallery  where  her  father 
sat  beside  a  lamp  reading  his  evening  paper ;  Mrs. 
Leighton  could  be  heard  in  colloquy  with  the  cook 
below,  and  Alma  had  gone  to  her  room.  She  bec- 
koned Fulkerson  with  the  hand  outstretched  behind 
her,  and  said,  "  Go  and  ask  him." 

"  Alone  !  "  he  palpitated. 

"  Oh,  what  a  cyowahcl ! "  she  cried,  and  went  with 
him.  "Ah  suppose  you'll  want  me  to  tell  him 
aboat  it." 

"  Well,  I  wish  you  'd  begin,  Miss  Woodburn,"  he 
said.  "  The  fact  is,  you  know,  I  've  been  over  it  so 
much  I  'm  kind  of  sick  of  the  thing." 

Miss  Woodburn  advanced,  and  put  her  hand  on 
her  father's  shoulder.  "  Look  heah,  papa !  Mr. 
Fulkerson  wants  to  ask  you  something,  and  he 
wants  me  to  do  it  fo'  him." 

The  colonel  looked  up  through  his  glasses  with 
the  sort  of  ferocity  elderly  men  sometimes  have  to 
put  on  in  order  to  keep  their  glasses  from  falling  off. 
His  daughter  continued  : — 

"  He  'h  got  into  an  awful  difficulty  with  his  edito' 
and  his  proprieto',  and  he  wants  you  to  pacify  them." 

"  I  do  not  know  whethah  I  understand  the  case 
exactly,"  said  the  colonel,  "  but  Mr.  Fulkerson  may 
command  me  to  the  extent  of  my  ability." 

"  You  don't  understand  it  aftah  what  Ah  Ve  said?" 
cried  the  girl.  "  Then  Ah  don't  see  but  what 
you  '11  have  to  explain  it  you'self,  Mr.  Fulkerson." 

"Well,  Miss   Woodburn   has   been   so   luminous 


162       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

about  it,  colonel,"  said  Fulkerson,  glad  of  the  joking 
shape  she  had  given  the  affair,  ''  that  I  can  only 
throw  in  a  little  side  light  here  and  there." 

The  colonel  listened,  as  Fulkerson  went  on,  with 
a  grave  diplomatic  satisfaction.  He  felt  gratified, 
honoured,  even,  he  said,  by  Mr.  Fulkerson's  appeal 
to  him  ;  and  probably  it  gave  him  something  of  the 
high  joy  that  an  affair  of  honour  would  have 
brought  him  in  the  days  when  he  had  arranged  for 
meetings  between  gentlemen.  Next  to  bearing  a 
challenge,  this  work  of  composing  a  difficulty  must 
have  been  grateful.  But  he  gave  no  outward  sign 
of  his  satisfaction  in  making  a  rtsumt  of  the  case 
so  as  to  get  the  points  clearly  in  his  mind. 

"  I  was  afraid,  sir,"  he  said,  with  the  state  due  to 
the  serious  nature  of  the  facts,  "that  Mr.  Lindau 
had  given  Mr.  Dryfoos  offence  by  some  of  his 
questions  at  the  dinner-table  last  night." 

"Perfect  red  rag  to  a  bull,"  Fulkerson  put  in; 
and  then  he  wanted  to  withdraw  his  words  at 
the  colonel's  look  of  displeasure. 

"  I  have  no  reflections  to  make  upon  Mr.  Lindau," 
Colonel  Woodburn  continued,  and  Fulkerson  felt 
grateful  to  him  for  going  on  ;  "I  do  not  agree  with 
Mr.  Lindau ;  I  totally  disagree  with  him  on  socio- 
logical points ;  but  the  course  of  the  conversation 
had  invited  him  to  the  expression  of  his  convictions, 
and  he  had  a  right  to  express  them,  so  far  as  they 
had  no  personal  bearing." 

"Of  course,"  said  Fulkerson,  while  Miss  Wood- 
burn  perched  on  the  arm  of  her  father's  chair. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       163 

"At  the  same  time,  sir,  I  think  that  if  Mr. 
Dryfoos  felt  a  personal  censure  in  Mr.  Lindau's 
questions  concerning  his  suppression  of  the  strike 
among  his  workmen,  he  had  a  right  to  resent  it." 

"Exactly,"  Fulkerson  assented. 

"But  it  must  be  evident  to  you,  sir,  that  a  high- 
spirited  gentleman  like  Mr.  March — I  confess  that 
my  feelings  are  with  him  very  warmly  in  the  matter 
— could  not  submit  to  dictation  of  the  nature  you 
describe." 

"  Yes,  I  see,"  said  Fulkerson ;  and  with  that 
strange  duplex  action  of  the  human  mind,  he  wished 
that  it  was  his  hair,  and  not  her  father's,  that  Miss 
Woodburn  was  poking  apart  with  the  corner  of  her 
fan. 

"Mr.  Lindau,"  the  colonel  concluded,  "was  right 
from  his  point  of  view,  and  Mr.  Dryfoos  was  equally 
right.  The  position  of  Mr.  March  is  perfectly 
correct " 

His  daughter  dropped  to  her  feet  from  his  chair 
arm.  "  Mah  goodness  !  If  nobody 's  in  the  wrong, 
ho'  awe  you  evah  going  to  get  the  mattah  straight  1 " 

"Yes,  you  see,"  Fulkerson  added,  "nobody  can 
give  in." 

"Pardon  me,"  said  the  colonel,  "the  case  is  one 
in  which  all  can  give  in." 

"I  don't  know  which '11  begin,"  said  Fulkerson. 

The  colonel  rose.     "Mr.  Lindau  must  begin,  sir. 

We  must  begin  by  seeing  Mr.  Lindau,  and  securing 

from  him  the  assurance  that  in  the  expression  of  his 

peculiar  views  he  had  no  intention  of  offering  any 

2K 


164       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

personal  offence  to  Mr.  Dryfoos.  If  I  have  formed  a 
correct  estimate  of  Mr.  Lindau,  this  will  be  perfectly 
simple." 

Fulkerson  shook  his  head.  "But  it  wouldn't 
help.  Dryfoos  don't  care  a  rap  whether  Lindau 
meant  any  personal  offence  or  not.  As  far  as  that 
is  concerned,  he 's  got  a  hide  like  a  hippopotamus. 
But  what  he  hates  is  Lindau's  opinions,  and  what 
he  says  is  that  no  man  who  holds  such  opinions 
shall  have  any  work  from  him.  And  what  March 
says  is  that  no  man  shall  be  punished  through  him 
for  his  opinions,  he  don't  care  what  they  are." 

The  colonel  stood  a  moment  in  silence.  "  And 
what  do  you  expect  me  to  do  under  the  circum- 
stances ? " 

"  I  came  to  you  for  advice — I  thought  you  might 
suggest " 

"  Do  you  wish  me  to  see  Mr.  Dryfoos  ? " 

"Well,  that's  about  the  size  of  it,"  Fulkerson 
admitted.  "You  see,  colonel,"  he  hastened  on,  "I 
know  that  you  have  a  great  deal  of  influence  with 
him ;  that  article  of  yours  is  about  the  only  thing 
he 's  ever  read  in  Every  Other  Week,  and  he 's  proud 
of  your  acquaintance.  Well,  you  know,"  and  here 
Fulkerson  brought  in  the  figure  that  struck  him  so 
much  in  Beaton's  phrase,  and  had  been  on  his  tongue 
ever  since,  "you're  the  man  on  horseback  to  him; 
and  he  'd  be  more  apt  to  do  what  you  say  than  if 
anybody  else  said  it." 

"  You  are  very  good,  sir,"  said  the  colonel,  trying 
to  be  proof  against  the  flattery,  "but  I  am  afraid 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  165 

you  overrate  my  influence."  Fulkerson  let  him 
ponder  it  silently,  and  his  daughter  governed  her 
impatience  by  holding  her  fan  against  her  lips. 
Whatever  the  process  was  in  the  colonel's  mind,  he 
said  at  last :  "I  see  no  good  reason  for  declining  to 
act  for  you,  Mr.  Fulkerson,  and  I  shall  be  very 
happy  if  I  can  be  of  service  to  you.  But" — he 
stopped  Fulkerson  from  cutting  in  with  precipitate 
thanks — "I  think  I  have  a  right,  sir,  to  ask  what 
your  course  will  be  in  the  event  of  failure  1  " 

"  Failure  1 "  Fulkerson  repeated,  in  dismay. 

"  Yes,  sir.  I  will  not  conceal  from  you  that  this 
mission  is  one  not  wholly  agreeable  to  my  feelings." 

"  Oh,  I  understand  that,  colonel,  and  I  assure  you 
that  I  appreciate,  I — 

"  There  is  no  use  trying  to  blink  the  fact,  sir,  that 
there  are  certain  aspects  of  Mr.  Dryfoos's  character 
in  which  he  is  not  a  gentleman.  We  have  alluded 
to  this  fact  before,  and  I  need  not  dwell  upon  it  now. 
I  may  say,  however,  that  my  misgivings  were  not 
wholly  removed  last  night." 

"  No,"  Fulkerson  assented ;  though  in  his  heart  he 
thought  the  old  man  had  behaved  very  well. 

"  What  I  wish  to  say  now  is  that  I  cannot  consent 
to  act  for  you,  in  this  matter,  merely  as  an  interme- 
diary whose  failure  would  leave  the  affair  in  statu 
quo." 

"  I  see,"  said  Fulkerson. 

"  And  I  should  like  some  intimation,  some  assur- 
ance, as  to  which  party  your  own  feelings  are  with 
in  the  difference." 


166        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

The  colonel  bent  his  eyes  sharply  on  Fulkerson ; 
Miss  "Woodburn  let  hers  fall ;  Fulkerson  felt  that  he 
was  being  tested,  and  he  said,  to  gain  time,  "  As 
between  Lindau  and  Dryfoos  1 "  though  he  knew 
this  was  not  the  point. 

"  As  between  Mr.  Dryfoos  and  Mr.  March,"  said 
the  colonel. 

Fulkerson  drew  a  long  breath,  and  took  his  cour- 
age in  both  hands.  "  There  can't  be  any  choice  for 
me  in  such  a  case.  I  'in  for  March,  every  time." 

The  colonel  seized  his  hand,  and  Miss  Woodburn 
said,  "  If  there  had  been  any  choice  fo'  you  in  such 
a  case,  I  should  never  have  let  papa  sti'  a  step  with 
you." 

"  Why,  in  regard  to  that,"  said  the  colonel,  with 
a  literal  application  of  the  idea,  "  was  it  your  inten- 
tion that  we  should  both  go  1 " 

"  Well,  I  don't  know  ;  I  suppose  it  was." 

"  I  think  it  will  be  better  for  me  to  go  alone,"  said 
the  colonel ;  and,  with  a  colour  from  his  experience 
in  affairs  of  honour,  he  added  :  "  In  these  matters  a 
principal  cannot  appear  without  compromising  his 
dignity.  I  believe  I  have  all  the  points  clearly  in 
mind,  and  I  think  I  should  act  more  freely  in 
meeting  Mr.  Dryfoos  alone." 

Fulkerson  tried  to  hide  the  eagerness  with  which 
he  met  these  agreeable  views.  He  felt  himself  ex- 
alted in  some  sort  to  the  level  of  the  colonel's  senti- 
ments, though  it  would  not  be  easy  to  say  whether 
this  was  through  the  desperation  bred  of  having 
committed  himself  to  March's  side,  or  through  the 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       167 

buoyant  hope  he  had  that  the  colonel  would  succeed 
in  his  mission.  "  I  Jm  not  afraid  to  talk  with  Dry- 
foos  about  it,"  he  said. 

"There  is  no  question  of  courage,"  said  the 
colonel.  "  It  is  a  question  of  dignity — of  personal 
dignity." 

"  Well,  don't  let  that  delay  you,  papa,"  said  his 
daughter,  following  him  to  the  door,  where  she 
found  him  his  hat,  and  Fulkerson  helped  him  on 
with  his  overcoat.  "  Ah  shall  be  jost  wald  to  know 
ho'  it's  toned  oat." 

"  Won't  you  let  me  go  up  to  the  house  with  you  ?" 
Fulkerson  began.  "  I  needn't  go  in " 

"  I  prefer  to  go  alone,"  said  the  colonel.  "  I  wish 
to  turn  the  points  over  in  my  mind,  and  I  am  afraid 
you  would  find  me  rather  dull  company." 

He  went  out,  and  Fulkerson  returned  with  Miss 
Woodburn  to  the  drawing-room,  where  she  said  the 
Leightons  were.  They  were  not  there,  but  she  did 
not  seem  disappointed. 

"Well,  Mr.  Fulkerson,"  she  said,  "you  have  got 
an  ahdeal  of  friendship,  su'  enough." 

"  Me  ? "  said  Fulkerson.  "  Oh,  my  Lord  !  Don't 
you  see  I  couldn't  do  anything  else  ?  And  I  'm 
scared  half  to  death,  anyway.  If  the  colonel  don't 
bring  the  old  man  round,  I  reckon  it 's  all  up  with 
me.  But  he  '11  fetch  him.  And  I  'm  just  prostrated 
with  gratitude  to  you,  Miss  Woodburn." 

She  waved  his  thanks  aside  with  her  fan.  "  What 
do  you  mean  by  its  being  all  up  with  you  1 " 

"  Why,  if  the  old  man  sticks  to  his  position,  and 


168       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

I  stick  to  March,  we've  both  got  to  go  overboard 
together.  Dryfoos  owns  the  magazine ;  he  can  stop 
it,  or  he  can  stop  us,  which  amounts  to  the  same 
thing,  as  far  as  we  're  concerned." 

"  And  then  what  1 "  the  girl  pursued. 

"  And  then,  nothing — till  we  pick  ourselves  up." 

"Do  you  mean  that  Mr.  Dryfoos  will  put  you 
both  oat  of  your  places  ? " 

"  He  may." 

"  And  Mr.  Mawch  takes  the  risk  of  that  jost  fo'  a 
principle  1 " 

"  I  reckon." 

"  And  you  do  it,  jost  fo'  an  ahdeal  ? " 

"  It  won't  do  to  own  it.  I  must  have  my  little 
axe  to  grind,  somewhere." 

"  Well,  men  awe  splendid,"  sighed  the  girl.  "  Ah 
will  say  it." 

"  Oh,  they  're  not  so  much  better  than  women," 
said  Fulkerson,  with  a  nervous  jocosity.  "  I  guess 
March  would  have  backed  down  if  it  hadn't  been  for 
his  wife.  She  was  as  hot  as  pepper  about  it,  and 
you  could  see  that  she  would  have  sacrificed  all  her 
husband's  relations  sooner  than  let  him  back  down 
an  inch  from  the  stand  he  had  taken.  It 's  pretty 
easy  for  a  man  to  stick  to  a  principle  if  he  has  a 
woman  to  stand  by  him.  But  when  you  come  to 
play  it  alone •" 

"  Mr.  Fulkerson,"  said  the  girl  solemnly,  "  Ah 
will  stand  bah  you  in  this,  if  all  the  woald  tones 
against  you."  The  tears  came  into  her  eyes,  and 
she  put  out  her  hand  to  him. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        169 

"  You  will  1 "  he  shouted,  in  a  rapture.  "  In 
every  way — and  always — as  long  as  you  live  ?  Do 
you  mean  it  1 "  He  had  caught  her  hand  to  his 
breast  and  was  grappling  it  tight  there,  and  drawing 
her  to  him. 

The  changing  emotions  chased  each  other  through 
her  heart  and  over  her  face  :  dismay,  shame,  pride, 
tenderness.  "  You  don't  believe,"  she  said  hoarsely, 
"  that  I  meant  that  ? " 

"No,  but  I  hope  you  do  mean  it ;  for  if  you  don't, 
nothing  else  means  anything." 

There  was  no  space,  there  was  only  a  point  of 
wavering.  "  Ah  do  mean  it." 

When  they  lifted  their  eyes  from  each  other  again 
it  was  half-past  ten.  "  No'  you  most  go,"  she  said. 

"  But  the  colonel— our  fate  ? " 

"  The  co'nel  is  often  oat  late,  and  Ah  'm  not 
afraid  of  any  fate,  no'  that  we  Ve  taken  it  into  ouah 
own  hands."  She  looked  at  him  with  dewy  eyes  of 
trust,  of  inspiration. 

"  Oh,  it 's  going  to  come  out  all  right,"  he  said. 
"It  can't  come  out  wrong  now,  no  matter  what 
happens.  But  who  'd  have  thought  it,  when  I  came 
into  this  house,  in  such  a  state  of  sin  and  misery, 
half  an  hour  ago " 

"  Three  houahs  and  a  half  ago  !  "  she  said.  "  No' 
you  most  jost  go.  Ah'm  tahed  to  death.  Good 
night.  You  can  come  in  the  mawning  to  see — papa." 
She  opened  the  door,  and  pushed  him  out  with 
enrapturing  violence,  and  he  ran  laughing  down  the 
steps  into  her  father's  arms.  f 

VOL.  II.— 8 


170  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Why,  colonel !  I  was  just  going  up  to  meet  you." 
He  really  thought  he  would  walk  off  his  exultation 
in  that  direction. 

"I  am  very  sorry  to  say,  Mr.  Fulkerson,"  the 
colonel  began  gravely,  "  that  Mr.  Dryfoos  adheres 
to  his  position." 

"  Oh,  all  right,"  said  Fulkerson,  with  unabated 
joy.  "It's  what  I  expected.  Well,  my  course  is 
clear ;  I  shall  stand  by  March,  and  I  guess  the  world 
won't  come  to  an  end  if  he  bounces  us  both.  But 
I  'm  everlasting  obliged  to  you,  Colonel  Woodburn, 
and  I  don't  know  what  to  say  to  you.  I — I  won't 
detain  you  now ;  it 's  so  late.  I  '11  see  you  in  the 
morning.  Good  ni " 

Fulkerson  did  not  realise  that  it  takes  two  to 
part.  The  colonel  laid  hold  of  his  arm  and  turned 
away  with  him.  "I  will  walk  toward  your  place 
with  you.  I  can  understand  why  you  should  be 
anxious  to  know  the  particulars  of  my  interview 
with  Mr.  Dryfoos ;"  and  in  the  statement  which 
followed  he  did  not  spare  him  the  smallest.  It  out- 
lasted their  walk,  and  detained  them  long  on  the 
steps  of  the  Every  Other  Week  building.  But  at  the 
end,  Fulkerson  let  himself  in  with  his  key  as  light 
of  heart  as  if  he  had  been  listening  to  the  gayest 
promises  that  fortune  could  make. 

By  the  time  he  met  March  at  the  office  next 
morning,  a  little,  but  only  a  very  little,  misgiving 
saddened  his  golden  heaven.  He  took  March's 
hand  with  high  courage,  and  said,  "Well,  the  old 
man  sticks  to  his  point,  March."  He  added,  with  the 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       171 

sense  of  saying  it  before  Miss  Woodburn,  "  And  / 
stick  by  you.  I've  thought  it  all  over,  and  I'd 
rather  be  right  with  you  than  wrong  with  him." 

"Well,  I  appreciate  your  motive,  Fulkerson," 
said  March.  "But  perhaps — perhaps  we  can  save 
over  our  heroics  for  another  occasion.  Lindau 
seems  to  have  got  in  with  his,  for  the  present." 

He  told  him  of  Lindau's  last  visit,  and  they  stood 
a  moment  looking  at  each  other  rather  queerly. 
Fulkerson  was  the  first  to  recover  his  spirits. 
"Well,"  he  said  cheerily,  "that  let's  us  out." 

"  Does  it  1  I  'm  not  sure  it  lets  me  out,"  said 
March;  but  he  said  this  in  tribute  to  his  crippled 
self-respect  rather  than  as  a  forecast  of  any  action 
in  the  matter. 

"  Why,  what  are  you  going  to  do  1 "  Fulkerson 
asked.  "  If  Lindau  won't  work  for  Dryfoos  you 
can't  make  him." 

March  sighed.  "  What  are  you  going  to  do  with 
this  money  1  "  He  glanced  at  the  heap  of  bills  he 
had  flung  on  the  table  between  them. 

Fulkerson  scratched  his  head.  "Ah,  dogged  if 
/  know.  Can't  we  give  it  to  the  deserving  poor, 
somehow,  if  we  can  find  'em  1 " 

"I  suppose  we  Ve  no  right  to  use  it  in  any  way. 
You  must  give  it  to  Dryfoos." 

"  To  the  deserving  rich  1  Well,  you  can  always 
find  them.  I  reckon  you  don't  want  to  appear  in 
the  transaction ;  /  don't,  either ;  but  I  guess  I 
must."  Fulkerson  gathered  up  the  money  and 
•carried  it  to  Conrad.  He  directed  him  to  account 


172       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

for  it  in  his  books  as  conscience-money,  and  he 
enjoyed  the  joke  more  than  Conrad  seemed  to  do 
when  he  was  told  where  it  came  from. 

Fulkerson  was  able  to  wear  off  the  disagreeable 
impression  the  affair  left  during  the  course  of  the 
forenoon,  and  he  met  Miss  Woodburn  with  all  a 
lover's  buoyancy  when  he  went  to  lunch.  She  was 
as  happy  as  he  when  he  told  her  how  fortunately 
the  whole  thing  had  ended,  and  he  took  her  view 
that  it  was  a  reward  of  his  courage  in  having  dared 
the  worst.  They  both  felt,  as  the  newly  plighted 
always  do,  that  they  were  in  the  best  relations  with 
the  beneficent  powers,  and  that  their  felicity  had 
been  especially  looked  to  in  the  disposition  of  events. 
They  were  in  a  glow  of  rapturous  content  with 
themselves  and  radiant  worship  of  each  other;  she 
was  sure  that  he  merited  the  bright  future  opening 
to  them  both,  as  much  as  if  he  owed  it  directly  to 
some  noble  action  of  his  own ;  he  felt  that  he  was 
indebted  for  the  favour  of  Heaven  entirely  to  the 
still  incredible  accident  of  her  preference  of  him 
over  other  men. 

Colonel  Woodburn,  who  was  not  yet  in  the  secret 
of  their  love,  perhaps  failed  for  this  reason  to  share 
their  satisfaction  with  a  result  so  unexpectedly 
brought  about.  The  blessing  on  their  hopes  seemed 
to  his  ignorance  to  involve  certain  sacrifices  of 
personal  feeling  at  which  he  hinted  in  suggesting 
that  Dryfoos  should  now  be  asked  to  make  some 
abstract  concessions  and  acknowledgments ;  his 
daughter  hastened  to  deny  that  these  were  at  all 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  173 

necessary ;  and  Fulkerson  easily  explained  why. 
The  thing  was  over ;  what  was  the  use  of  opening 
it  up  again  ? 

"Perhaps  none,"  the  colonel  admitted.  But  he 
added,  "  I  should  like  the  opportunity  of  taking  Mr. 
Lind au's  hand  in  the  presence  of  Mr.  Dryfoos,  and 
assuring  him  that  I  considered  him  a  man  of  principle 
and  a  man  of  honour ;  a  gentleman,  sir,  whom  I  was 
proud  and  happy  to  have  known." 

"  Well,  Ah  've  no  doabt,"  said  his  daughter 
demurely,  "that  you'll  have  the  chance  some  day; 
and  we  would  all  lahke  to  join  you.  But  at  the 
same  tahme,  I  think  Mr.  Fulkerson  is  well  oat  of  it 
fo'  the  present." 


PAET  FIFTH. 


SUPERFICIALLY,  the  affairs  of  Every  Other  Week 
settled  into  their  wonted  form  again,  and  for  Fulker- 
son  they  seemed  thoroughly  reinstated.  But  March 
had  a  feeling  of  impermanency  from  what  had 
happened,  mixed  with  a  fantastic  sense  of  shame 
toward  Lindau.  He  did  not  sympathise  with 
Lindau's  opinions,  he  thought  his  remedy  for  existing 
evils  as  wildly  impracticable  as  Colonel  Woodburn's. 
But  while  he  thought  this,  and  while  he  could  justly 
blame  Fulkerson  for  Lindau's  presence  at  Dryfoos's. 
dinner,  which  his  zeal  had  brought  about  in  spite  of 
March's  protests,  still  he  could  not  rid  himself  of 
the  reproach  of  uncandour  with  Lindau.  He  ought 
to  have  told  him  frankly  about  the  ownership  of  the 
magazine,  and  what  manner  of  man  the  man  was 
whose  money  he  was  taking.  But  he  said  that  he 
never  could  have  imagined  that  he  was  serious  in 
his  preposterous  attitude  in  regard  to  a  class  of  men 
who  embody  half  the  prosperity  of  the  country; 
and  he  had  moments  of  revolt  against  his  own 
humiliation  before  Lindau,  in  which  he  found  it 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  175 

monstrous  that  he  should  return  Dryfoos's  money  as 
if  it  had  been  the  spoil  of  a  robber.  His  wife  agreed 
with  him  in  these  moments,  and  said  it  was  a  great 
relief  not  to  have  that  tiresome  old  German  coming 
about.  They  had  to  account  for  his  absence 
evasively  to  the  children,  whom  they  could  not  very 
well  tell  that  their  father  was  living  on  money  that 
Lindau  disdained  to  take,  even  though  Lindau  was 
wrong  and  their  father  was  right.  This  heightened 
Mrs.  March's  resentment  toward  both  Lindau  and 
Dryfoos,  who  between  them  had  placed  her  husband 
in  a  false  position.  If  anything,  she  resented 
Dryfoos's  conduct  more  than  Lindau's.  He  had 
never  spoken  to  March  about  the  affair  since  Lindau 
had  renounced  his  work,  or  added  to  the  apologetic 
messages  he  had  sent  by  Fulkerson.  So  far  as 
March  knew,  Dryfoos  had  been  left  to  suppose  that 
Lindau  had  simply  stopped  for  some  reason  that  did 
not  personally  affect  him.  They  never  spoke  of  him, 
and  March  was  too  proud  to  ask  either  Fulkerson  or 
Conrad  whether  the  old  man  knew  that  Lindau  had 
returned  his  money.  He  avoided  talking  to  Conrad, 
from  a  feeling  that  if  he  did,  he  should  involuntarily 
lead  him  on  to  speak  of  his  differences  with  his 
father.  Between  himself  and  Fulkerson,  even,  he 
was  uneasily  aware  of  a  want  of  their  old  perfect 
friendliness.  Fulkerson  had  finally  behaved  with 
honour  and  courage  ;  but  his  provisional  reluctance 
had  given  March  the  measure  of  Fulkerson's 
character  in  one  direction,  and  he  could  not  ignore 
the  fact  that  it  was  smaller  than  he  could  have  wished. 


176        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

He  could  not  make  out  whether  Fulkerson  shared 
his  discomfort  or  not.  It  certainly  wore  away,  even 
with  March,  as  time  passed,  and  with  Fulkerson,  in 
the  bliss  of  his  fortunate  love,  it  was  probably  far 
more  transient,  if  it  existed  at  all.  He  advanced 
into  the  winter  as  radiantly  as  if  to  meet  the  spring, 
and  he  said  that  if  there  were  any  pleasanter  month 
of  the  year  than  November,  it  was  December, 
especially  when  the  weather  was  good  and  wet  and 
muddy  most  of  the  time,  so  that  you  had  to  keep 
indoors  a  long  while  after  you  called  anywhere. 

Colonel  Woodburn  had  the  anxiety,  in  view  of  his 
daughter's  engagement,  when  she  asked  his  consent 
to  it,  that  such  a  dreamer  must  have  in  regard  to 
any  reality  that  threatens  to  affect  the  course  of  his 
reveries.  He  had  not  perhaps  taken  her  marriage 
into  account,  except  as  a  remote  contingency ;  and 
certainly  Fulkerson  was  not  the  kind  of  son-in-law 
that  he  had  imagined  in  dealing  with  that  abstrac- 
tion. But  because  he  had  nothing  of  the  sort 
definitely  in  mind,  he  could  not  oppose  the  selection 
of  Fulkerson  with  success ;  he  really  knew  nothing 
against  him,  and  he  knew  many  things  in  his 
favour ;  Fulkerson  inspired  him  with  the  liking  that 
every  one  felt  for  him  in  a  measure ;  he  amused 
him,  he  cheered  him ;  and  the  Colonel  had  been  so 
much  used  to  leaving  action  of  all  kinds  to  his 
daughter  that  when  he  came  to  close  quarters  with 
the  question  of  a  son-in-law,  he  felt  helpless  to 
decide  it,  and  he  let  her  decide  it,  as  if  it  were  still 
to  be  decided  when  it  was  submitted  to  him.  She 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        177 

was  competent  to  treat  it  in  all  its  phases :  not 
merely  those  of  personal  interest,  but  those  of  duty 
to  the  broken  Southern  past,  sentimentally  dear  to 
him,  and  practically  absurd  to  her.  No  such  South 
as  he  remembered  had  ever  existed  to  her  know- 
ledge, and  no  such  civilisation  as  he  imagined  would 
ever  exist,  to  her  belief,  anywhere.  She  took  the 
world  as  she  found  it,  and  made  the  best  of  it.  She 
trusted  in  Fulkerson ;  she  had  proved  his  magna- 
nimity in  a  serious  emergency ;  and  in  small  things 
she  was  willing  fearlessly  to  chance  it  with  him. 
She  was  not  a  sentimentalist,  and  there  was  nothing 
fantastic  in  her  expectations ;  she  was  a  girl  of 
good  sense  and  right  mind,  and  she  liked  the  im- 
mediate practicality  as  well  as  the  final  honour  of 
Fulkerson.  She  did  not  idealise  him,  but  in  the 
highest  effect  she  realised  him ;  she  did  him  justice, 
and  she  would  not  have  believed  that  she  did  him 
more  than  justice  if  she  had  sometimes  known  him 
to  do  himself  less. 

Their  engagement  was  a  fact  to  which  the 
Leighton  household  adjusted  itself  almost  as  simply 
as  the  lovers  themselves;  Miss  Woodburn  told  the 
ladies  at  once,  and  it  was  not  a  thing  that  Fulkerson 
could  keep  from  March  very  long.  He  sent  word 
of  it  to  Mrs.  March  by  her  husband ;  and  his 
engagement  perhaps  did  more  than  anything  else 
to  confirm  the  confidence  in  him  which  had  been 
shaken  by  his  early  behaviour  in  the  Lindau  epi- 
sode, and  not  wholly  restored  by  his  tardy  fidelity 
to  March.  But  now  she  felt  that  a  man  who 
8*  2L 


178  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

wished  to  get  married  so  obviously  and  entirely  foi 
love  was  full  of  all  kinds  of  the  best  instincts,  and 
only  needed  the  guidance  of  a  wife  to  become  very 
noble.  She  interested  herself  intensely  in  balancing 
the  respective  merits  of  the  engaged  couple,  and 
after  her  call  upon  Miss  Woodburn  in  her  new 
character  she  prided  herself  upon  recognising  the 
worth  of  some  strictly  Southern  qualities  in  her, 
while  maintaining  the  general  average  of  New 
England  superiority.  She  could  not  reconcile  her- 
self to  the  Virginian  custom  illustrated  in  her 
having  been  christened  with  the  surname  of  Madi- 
son ;  and  she  said  that  its  pet  form  of  Mad,  which 
Fulkerson  promptly  invented,  only  made  it  more 
ridiculous. 

Fulkerson  was  slower  in  telling  Beaton.  He  was 
afraid,  somehow,  of  Beaton's  taking  the  matter  in 
the  cynical  way ;  Miss  Woodburn  said  she  would 
break  off  the  engagement  if  Beaton  was  left  to  guess 
it  or  find  it  out  by  accident,  and  then  Fulkerson 
plucked  up  his  courage.  Beaton  received  the  news 
with  gravity,  and  with  a  sort  of  melancholy  meek- 
ness that  strongly  moved  Fulkerson's  sympathy,  and 
made  him  wish  that  Beaton  was  engaged  too. 

It  made  Beaton  feel  very  old;  it  somehow  left 
him  behind  and  forgotten;  in  a  manner,  it  made 
him  feel  trifled  with.  Something  of  the  unfriendli- 
ness of  fate  seemed  to  overcast  his  resentment,  and 
he  allowed  the  sadness  of  his  conviction  that  he  had 
not  the  means  to  marry  on  to  tinge  his  recognition 
of  the  fact  that  Alma  Leighton  would  not  have 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        179 

wanted  him  to  marry  her  if  he  had.  He  was  now 
often  in  that  martyr  mood  in  which  he  wished  to 
help  his  father ;  not  only  to  deny  himself  Chianti, 
but  to  forego  a  fur-lined  overcoat  which  he  intended 
to  get  for  the  winter.  He  postponed  the  moment 
of  actual  sacrifice  as  regarded  the  Chianti,  and  he 
bought  the  overcoat  in  an  anguish  of  self-reproach. 
He  wore  it  the  first  evening  after  he  got  it  in  going 
to  call  upon  the  Leightons,  and  it  seemed  to  him  a 
piece  of  ghastly  irony  when  Alma  complimented  his 
picturesqueness  in  it,  and  asked  him  to  let  her 
sketch  him. 

"  Oh,  you  can  sketch  me,"  he  said,  with  so  much 
gloom  that  it  made  her  laugh. 

"If  you  think  it's  so  serious,  I'd  rather  not." 

"  No,  no  !     Go  ahead  !     How  do  you  want  me  ? " 

"  Oh,  fling  yourself  down  on  a  chair  in  one  of 
your  attitudes  of  studied  negligence ;  and  twist  one 
corner  of  your  moustache  with  affected  absence  of 
mind." 

"And  you  think  I'm  always  studied,  always 
affected  1 " 

"  I  didn't  say  so." 

"  I  didn't  ask  you  what  you  said." 

"  And  I  won't  tell  you  what  I  think." 

"Ah,  I  know  what  you  think." 

"  What  made  you  ask,  then  ? "  The  girl  laughed 
again  with  the  satisfaction  of  her  sex  in  cornering 
a  man. 

Beaton  made  a  show  of  not  deigning  to  reply,  and 
put  himself  in  the  pose  she  suggested  frowning. 


180  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Ah,  that 's  it.     But  a  little  more  animation. 
"  As  when  a  great  thought  strikes  along  the  brain, 
And  flushes  all  the  cheek.'  " 

She  put  her  forehead  down  on  the  back  of  her 
hand  and  laughed  again.  "  You  ought  to  be  photo- 
graphed. You  look  as  if  you  were  sitting  for  it." 

Beaton  said  :  "  That 's  because  I  know  I  am  being 
photographed,  in  one  way.  I  don't  think  you  ought 
to  call  me  affected.  I  never  am  so  with  you ;  I 
know  it  wouldn't  be  of  any  use." 

"  Oh,  Mr.  Beaton,  you  natter." 

"  No,  I  never  flatter  you." 

"  I  meant  you  flattered  yourself." 

"How?" 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know.     Imagine." 

"  I  know  what  you  mean.  You  think  I  can't  be 
sincere  with  anybody." 

"  Oh,  no  I  don't." 

"  What  do  you  think  ? " 

"That  you  can't — try."  Alma  gave  another 
victorious  laugh. 

Miss  Woodburn  and  Fulkerson  would  once  have 
both  feigned  a  great  interest  in  Alma's  sketching 
Beaton,  and  made  it  the  subject  of  talk,  in  which 
they  approached  as  nearly  as  possible  the  real 
interest  of  their  lives.  Now  they  frankly  remained 
away,  in  the  dining-room,  which  was  very  cozy  after 
the  dinner  had  disappeared ;  the  colonel  sat  with  his 
lamp  and  paper  in  the  gallery  beyond;  Mrs.  Leighton 
was  about  her  housekeeping  affairs,  in  the  content 
she  always  felt  when  Alma  was  with  Beaton. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  181 

"  They  seem  to  be  having  a  pretty  good  time  in 
there,"  said  Fulkerson,  detaching  himself  from  his 
own  absolute  good  time  as  well  as  he  could. 

"  At  least  Alma  does,"  said  Miss  Woodburn. 

"  Do  you  think  she  cares  for  him  1 " 

"  Quahte  as  moch  as  he  desoves." 

"  What  makes  you  all  down  on  Beaton  around 
here  ?  He 's  not  such  a  bad  fellow." 

"  We  awe  not  all  doan  on  him.  Mrs.  Leighton 
isn't  doan  on  him." 

"  Oh,  I  guess  if  it  was  the  old  lady,  there  wouldn't 
be  much  question  about  it." 

They  both  laughed,  and  Alma  said,  "  They  seem 
to  be  greatly  amused  with  something  in  there." 

"Me,  probably,"  said  Beaton.  "I  seem  to  amuse 
everybody  to-night." 

"  Don't  you  always  ?  " 

"I  always  amuse  you,  I'm  afraid,  Alma." 

She  looked  at  him  as  if  she  were  going  to  snub 
.him  openly  for  using  her  name ;  but  apparently  she 
decided  to  do  it  covertly.  "  You  didn't  at  first.  I 
really  used  to  believe  you  could  be  serious  once." 

"  Couldn't  you  believe  it  again  ?     Now  1 " 

"  Not  when  you  put  on  that  wind-harp  stop." 

"Wetmore  has  been  talking  to  you  about  me. 
He  would  sacrifice  his  best  friend  to  a  phrase.  He 
spends  his  time  making  them." 

"He's  made  some  very  pretty  ones  about  you." 

"  Like  the  one  you  just  quoted  ? " 

"  No,  not  exactly.  He  admires  you  ever  so  much. 
He  says ."  She  stopped,  teasingly. 


182       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  What  1 " 

"He  says  you  could  be  almost  anything  you 
wished,  if  you  didn't  wish  to  be  everything." 

"That  sounds  more  like  the  school  of  "Wetmore. 
That's  what  you  say,  Alma.  Well,  if  there  were 
something  you  wished  me  to  be,  I  could  be  it." 

"  We  might  adapt  Kingsley :  '  Be  good,  sweet 
maid,  and  let  who  will  be  clever.' "  He  could  not  help 
laughing.  She  went  on:  "I  always  thought  that 
was  the  most  patronising  and  exasperating  thing  ever 
addressed  to  a  human  girl ;  and  we  Ve  had  to  stand 
a  good  deal  in  our  time.  I  should  like  to  have  it 
applied  to  the  other  '  sect '  a  while.  As  if  any  girl 
that  was  a  girl  would  be  good  if  she  had  the  remotest 
chance  of  being  clever." 

"  Then  you  wouldn't  wish  me  to  be  good  ?  ' 
Beaton  asked. 

"Not  if  you  were  a  girl." 

"You  want  to  shock  me.  Well,  I  suppose  I 
deserve  it.  But  if  I  were  one-tenth  part  as  good  as 
you  are,  Alma,  I  should  have  a  lighter  heart  than  I 
have  now.  I  know  that  I  'm  fickle,  but  I  'm  not 
false,  as  you  think  I  am." 

"  Who  said  I  thought  you  were  false  1 " 

"  No  one,"  said  Beaton.  "  It  isn't  necessary, 
when  you  look  it — live  it." 

"  Oh,  dear  !  I  didn't  know  I  devoted  my  whole 
time  to  the  subject." 

"  I  know  I  'm  despicable.  I  could  tell  you  some- 
thing— the  history  of  this  day,  even — that  would 
make  you  despise  me."  Beaton  had  in  mind  his 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  183 

purchase  of  the  overcoat,  which  Alma  was  getting 
in  so  effectively,  with  the  money  he  ought  to  have 
sent  his  father.  "  But,"  he  went  on  darkly,  with  a 
sense  that  what  he  was  that  moment  suffering  for 
his  selfishness  must  somehow  be  a  kind  of  atonement, 
which  would  finally  leave  him  to  the  guiltless  enjoy- 
ment of  the  overcoat,  "you  wouldn't  believe  the 
depths  of  baseness  I  could  descend  to." 

"  I  would  try,"  said  Alma,  rapidly  shading  the 
collar,  "  if  you  'd  give  me  some  hint." 

Beaton  had  a  sudden  wish  to  pour  out  his  remorse 
to  her,  but  he  was  afraid  of  her  laughing  at  him. 
He  said  to  himself  that  this  was  a  very  wholesome 
fear,  and  that  if  he  could  always  have  her  at  hand 
he  should  not  make  a  fool  of  himself  so  often.  A 
man  conceives  of  such  an  office  as  the  very  noblest 
for  a  woman;  he  worships  her  for  it  if  he  is 
magnanimous.  But  Beaton  was  silent,  and  Alma 
put  back  her  head  for  the  right  distance  on  her 
sketch.  "  Mr.  Fulkerson  thinks  you  are  the 
sublimest  of  human  beings  for  advising  him  to  get 
Colonel  Woodburn  to  interview  Mr.  Dryfoos  about 
Lindau.  What  have  you  ever  done  with  your 
Judas  ? " 

"  I  haven't  done  anything  with  it.  Nadel  thought 
he  would  take  hold  of  it  at  one  time,  but  he  dropped 
it  again.  After  all,  I  don't  suppose  it  could  be 
popularised.  Fulkerson  wanted  to  offer  it  as  a 
premium  to  subscribers  for  Every  Other  Week,  but  I 
sat  down  on  that." 

Alma  could  not  feel  the  absurdity  of  this,  and  she 


184       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

merely  said,  "  Every  Other  Week  seems  to  be  going  on 
just  the  same  as  ever." 

"  Yes,  the  trouble  has  all  blown  over,  I  believe 
Fulkerson,"  said  Beaton,  with  a  return  to  what  they 
were  saying,  "  has  managed  the  whole  business  very 
well.  But  he  exaggerates  the  value  of  my  advice." 

"  Very  likely,"  Alma  suggested  vaguely.  "  Or 
no  !  Excuse  me  !  He  couldn't,  he  couldn't !  She 
laughed  delightedly  at  Beaton's  foolish  look  of 
embarrassment. 

He  tried  to  recover  his  dignity  in  saying,  "  He 's 
a  very  good  fellow,  and  he  deserves  his  happiness  " 

"Oh,  indeed!"  said  Alma  perversely.  "Does 
any  one  deserve  happiness  1 " 

"I  know  I  don't,"  sighed  Beaton. 

"  You  mean  you  don't  get  it." 

"I  certainly  don't  get  it." 

"Ah,  but  that  isn't  the  reason." 

"  What  is  ? " 

"  That 's  the  secret  of  the  universe."  She  bit  in 
her  lower  lip,  and  looked  at  him  with  eyes  of  gleans 
ing  fun. 

"  Are  you  never  serious  1 "  he  asked. 

"  With  serious  people — always.' 

"  /  am  serious ;  and  you  have  the  secret  of  my 

happiness ."      He    threw    himself    impulsively 

forward  in  his  chair. 

"  Oh,  pose,  pose  ! "  she  cried. 

"  I  won't  pose,"  he  answered,  "  and  you  have  got 
to  listen  to  me.  You  know  I  'm  in  love  with  you ; 
and  I  know  that  once  you  cared  for  me.  Can't  that 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        185 

time — won't  it — come  back  again  1  Try  to  think  so, 
Alma ! " 

"  No,"  she  said,  briefly  and  seriously  enough. 

"But  that  seems  impossible.  What  is  it  I've 
done — what  have  you  against  me  ? " 

"  Nothing.  But  that  time  is  past.  I  couldn't 
recall  it  if  I  wished.  Why  did  you  bring  it  up  ? 
You  Ve  broken  your  word.  You  know  I  wouldn't 
have  let  you  keep  coming  here  if  you  hadn't 
promised  never  to  refer  to  it." 

"  How  could  I  help  it  ?  With  that  happiness  near 
us — Fulkerson " 

"  Oh,  it 's  that  1     I  might  have  known  it ! " 

"No,  it  isn't  that — it's  something  far  deeper. 
But  if  it 's  nothing  you  have  against  me,  what  is  it, 
Alma,  that  keeps  you  from  caring  for  me  now  as 
you  did  then  ?  I  haven't  changed." 

"But  /  have.  I  shall  never  care  for  you  again, 
Mr.  Beaton ;  you  might  as  well  understand  it  once 
for  all.  Don't  think  it's  anything  in  yourself,  or 
that  I  think  you  unworthy  of  me.  I  'm  not  so  self- 
satisfied  as  that ;  I  know  very  well  that  I  'm  not  a 
perfect  character,  and  that  I  Ve  no  claim  on  perfec- 
tion in  anybody  else.  I  think  women  who  want 
that  are  fools ;  they  won't  get  it,  and  they  don't 
deserve  it.  But  I  've  learned  a  good  deal  more  about 
myself  than  I  knew  in  St.  Barnaby,  and  a  life  of 
work,  of  art,  and  of  art  alone — that's  what  I've 
made  up  my  mind  to." 

"  A  woman  that 's  made  up  her  mind  to  that  has 
no  heart  to  hinder  her ! " 


186       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Would  a  man  have  that  had  done  so  1" 

"  But  I  don't  believe  you,  Alma.  You  're  merely 
laughing  at  me.  And  besides,  with  me  you  needn't 
give  up  art.  We  could  work  together.  You  know 
how  much  I  admire  your  talent.  I  believe  I  could 
help  it — serve  it ;  I  would  be  its  willing  slave,  and 
yours,  Heaven  knows  !  " 

"  I  don't  want  any  slave — nor  any  slavery.  I  want 
to  be  free — always.  Now  do  you  see  1  I  don't  care 
for  you,  and  I  never  could  in  the  old  way ;  but  I 
should  have  to  care  for  some  one  more  than  I  believe 
I  ever  shall  to  give  up  my  work.  Shall  we  go  on  ? " 
She  looked  at  her  sketch. 

"  No,  we  shall  not  go  on,"  he  said,  gloomily  as 
he  rose. 

"  I  suppose  you  blame  me,"  she  said,  rising  too. 

"  Oh  no  !  I  blame  no  one — or  only  myself.  I 
threw  my  chance  away." 

"  I  'm  glad  you  see  that ;  and  I  'm  glad  you  did 
it.  You  don't  believe  me,  of  course.  Why  do  men 
think  life  can  be  only  the  one  thing  to  women  ? 
And  if  you  come  to  the  selfish  view,  who  are  the 
happy  women  1  I  'm  sure  that  if  work  doesn't  fail 
me,  health  won't,  and  happiness  won't." 

"  But  you  could  work  on  with  me " 

"  Second  fiddle.  Do  you  suppose  I  shouldn't  be 
woman  enough  to  wish  my  work  always  less  and 
lower  than  yours  ?  At  least  I  Ve  heart  enough  for 
that ! " 

"  You  Ve  heart  enough  for  anything,  Alma.  I 
was  a  fool  to  say  you  hadn't." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  187 

"  I  think  the  women  who  keep  their  hearts  have 
an  even  chance,  at  least,  of  having  heart " 

"  Ah,  there  's  where  you  're  wrong  ! " 

"  But  mine  isn't  mine  to  give  you,  anyhow.  And 
now  I  don't  want  you  ever  to  speak  to  me  about  this 
again." 

"  Oh,  there 's  no  danger  ! "  he  cried  bitterly.  "  I 
shall  never  willingly  see  you  again." 

"  That 's  as  you  like,  Mr.  Beaton.  We  Ve  had  to 
"be  very  frank,  but  I  don't  see  why  we  shouldn't  be 
friends.  Still,  we  needn't,  if  you  don't  like." 

"  And  I  may  come — I  may  come  here — as — as 
usual  1 " 

"  Why,  if  you  can  consistently,"  she  said,  with  a 
smile,  and  she  held  out  her  hand  to  him. 

He  went  home  dazed,  and  feeling  as  if  it  were  a 
bad  joke  that  had  been  put  upon  him.  At  least  the 
affair  went  so  deep  that  it  estranged  the  aspect  of 
his  familiar  studio.  Some  of  the  things  in  it  were 
not  very  familiar ;  he  had  spent  lately  a  great  deal 
on  rugs,  on  stuffs,  on  Japanese  bric-a-brac.  When 
he  saw  these  things  in  the  shops  he  had  felt  that  he 
must  have  them  ;  that  they  were  necessary  to  him  ; 
and  he  was  partly  in  debt  for  them,  still  without 
having  sent  any  of  his  earnings  to  pay  his  father. 
As  he  looked  at  them  now  he  liked  to  fancy  some- 
thing weird  and  conscious  in  them  as  the  silent  wit- 
nesses of  a  broken  life.  He  felt  about  among  some 
of  the  smaller  objects  on  the  mantel  for  his  pipe. 
Before  he  slept  he  was  aware,  in  the  luxury  of  his 
despair,  of  a  remote  relief,  an  escape  ;  and  after  all, 


188  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

the  understanding  he  had  come  to  with  Alma  was 
only  the  explicit  formulation  of  terms  long  tacit 
between  them.  Beaton  would  have  been  puzzled 
more  than  he  knew  if  she  had  taken  him  seriously. 
It  was  inevitable  that  he  should  declare  himself  in 
love  with  her ;  but  he  was  not  disappointed  at  her 
rejection  of  his  love ;  perhaps  not  so  much  as  he 
would  have  been  at  its  acceptance,  though  he  tried 
to  think  otherwise,  and  to  give  himself  airs  of 
tragedy.  He  did  not  really  feel  that  the  result  was 
worse  than  what  had  gone  before,  and  it  left  him 
free. 

But  he  did  not  go  to  the  Leightons  again  for  so 
long  a  time  that  Mrs.  Leighton  asked  Alma  what 
had  happened.  Alma  told  her. 

"  And  he  won't  come  any  more  1 "  her  mother 
sighed,  with  reserved  censure. 

"  Oh,  I  think  he  will.  He  couldn't  very  well  come 
the  next  night.  But  he  has  the  habit  of  coming, 
and  with  Mr.  Beaton  habit  is  everything — even  the. 
habit  of  thinking  he 's  in  love  with  some  one." 

"  Alma,"  said  her  mother,  "  I  don't  think  it 's 
very  nice  for  a  girl  to  let  a  young  man  keep  coming 
to  see  her  after  she 's  refused  him." 

"  Why  not,  if  it  amuses  him  and  doesn't  hurt  the 
girl?"  " 

"  But  it  does  hurt  her,  Alma.  It — it 's  indelicate. 
It  isn't  fair  to  him  ;  it  gives  him  hopes." 

"  Well,  mamma,  it  hasn't  happened  in  the  given 
case  yet.  If  Mr.  Beaton  comes  again  I  won't  see 
him,  and  you  can  forbid  him  the  house." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        189 

"  If  I  could  only  feel  sure,  Alma,"  said  her 
mother,  taking  up  another  branch  of  the  inquiry, 
"  that  you  really  knew  your  own  mind,  I  should  be 
easier  about  it." 

"  Then  you  can  rest  perfectly  quiet,  mamma.  I 
do  know  my  own  mind  ;  and  what 's  worse,  I  know 
Mr.  Beaton's  mind." 

"  What  do  you  mean  ? " 

"  I  mean  that  he  spoke  to  me  the  other  night 
simply  because  Mr.  Fulkerson's  engagement  had 
broken  him  all  up." 

"What  expressions!"   Mrs.  Leigh  ton  lamented. 

"  He  let  it  out  himself,"  Alma  went  on.  "  And 
you  wouldn't  have  thought  it  was  very  flattering 
yourself.  When  I  'm  made  love  to,  after  this,  I 
prefer  to  be  made  love  to  in  an  off-year,  when  there 
isn't  another  engaged  couple  anywhere  about." 

"  Did  you  tell  him  that,  Alma  ? " 

"  Tell  him  that !  What  do  you  mean,  mamma  ? 
I  may  be  indelicate,  but  I  'm  not  quite  so  indelicate 
as  that." 

"  I  didn't  mean  you  were  indelicate,  really,  Alma, 
but  I  wanted  to  warn  you.  I  think  Mr.  Beaton  was 
very  much  in  earnest." 

"  Oh,  so  did  he  !" 

"  And  you  didn't  ? " 

"  Oh  yes,  for  the  time  being.  I  suppose  he 's  very 
much  in  earnest  with  Miss  Vance  at  times,  and  with 
Miss  Dryfoos  at  others.  Sometimes  he 's  a  painter, 
and  sometimes  he 's  an  architect,  and  sometimes  he 's 
a  sculptor.  He  has  too  many  gifts — too  many  tastes." 


190  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  And  if  Miss  Vance,  and  Miss  Dryfoos ' 

"  Oh,  do  say  Sculpture  and  Architecture,  mamma  ! 
It 's  getting  so  dreadfully  personal ! " 

"  Alma,  you  know  that  I  only  wish  to  get  at  your 
real  feeling  in  the  matter." 

"  And  you  know  that  I  don't  want  to  let  you — 
especially  when  I  haven't  got  any  real  feeling  in  the 
matter.  But  I  should  think — speaking  in  the 
abstract  entirely — that  if  either  of  those  arts  was 
ever  going  to  be  in  earnest  about  him,  it  would 
want  his  exclusive  devotion  for  a  week  at  least." 

"I  didn't  know,"  said  Mrs.  Leighton,  "that  he 
was  doing  anything  now  at  the  others.  I  thought 
he  was  entirely  taken  up  with  his  work  on  Every 
Other  Week" 

"  Oh,  he  is  !  he  is  ! " 

"And  you  certainly  can't  say,  my  dear,  that  he 
hasn't  been  very  kind — very  useful  to  you,  in  that 
matter." 

"And  so  I  ought  to  have  said  yes  out  of  grati- 
tude ?  Thank  you,  mamma !  I  didn't  know  you 
held  me  so  cheap." 

"You  know  whether  I  hold  you  cheap  or  not, 
Alma.  I  don't  want  you  to  cheapen  yourself.  I 
don't  want  you  to  trifle  with  any  one.  I  want  you 
to  be  honest  with  yourself." 

"  Well,  come  now,  mamma  !  Suppose  you  begin. 
I  've  been  perfectly  honest  with  myself,  and  I  've 
been  honest  with  Mr.  Beaton.  I  don't  care  for  him, 
and  I  've  told  him  I  didn't ;  so  he  may  be  supposed 
to  know  it  If  he  comes  here  after  this,  he  11  come 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       191 

as  a  plain,  unostentatious  friend  of  the  family,  and 
it's  for  you  to  say  whether  he  shall  come  in  that 
capacity  or  not.  I  hope  you  won't  trifle  with  him, 
and  let  him  get  the  notion  that  he 's  coming  on  any 
other  basis." 

Mrs.  Leighton  felt  the  comfort  of  the  critical 
attitude  far  too  keenly  to  abandon  it  for  anything 
constructive.  She  only  said,  "  You  know  very  well, 
Alma,  that 's  a  matter  I  can  have  nothing  to  do  with." 

"  Then  you  leave  him  entirely  to  me  1 " 

"  I  hope  you  will  regard  his  right  to  candid  and 
open  treatment." 

"  He 's  had  nothing  but  the  most  open  and  candid 
treatment  from  me,  mamma.  It 's  you  that  want  to 
play  fast  and  loose  with  him.  And  to  tell  you  the 
truth,  I  believe  he  would  like  that  a  good  deal 
better ;  I  believe  that  if  there 's  anything  he  hates, 
it's  openness  and  candour." 

Alma  laughed,  and  put  her  arms  round  her 
mother,  who  could  not  help  laughing  a  little  too. 


n. 


THE  winter  did  not  renew  for  Christine  and  Mela 
the  social  opportunity  which  the  spring  had  offered. 
After  the  musicale  at  Mrs.  Horn's,  they  both  made 
their  party-call,  as  Mela  said,  in  due  season  •  but 
they  did  not  find  Mrs.  Horn  at  home,  and  neither 
she  nor  Miss  Vance  came  to  see  them  after  people 
returned  to  town  in  the  fall.  They  tried  to  believe 
for  a  time  that  Mrs.  Horn  had  not  got  their  cards  ; 
this  pretence  failed  them,  and  they  fell  back  upon 
their  pride,  or  rather  Christine's  pride.  Mela  had 
little  but  her  good-nature  to  avail  her  in  any  exi- 
gency, and  if  Mrs.  Horn  or  Miss  Vance  had  come  to 
call  after  a  year  of  neglect,  she  would  have  received 
them  as  amiably  as  if  they  had  not  lost  a  day  in 
coming.  But  Christine  had  drawn  a  line,  beyond 
which  they  would  not  have  been  forgiven  ;  and  she 
had  planned  the  words  and  the  behaviour  with 
which  she  would  have  punished  them  if  they  had 
appeared  then.  Neither  sister  imagined  herself  in 
anywise  inferior  to  them ;  but  Christine  was  sus- 
picious, at  least,  and  it  was  Mela  who  invented  the 
hypothesis  of  the  lost  cards.  As  nothing  happened 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        193 

to  prove  or  to  disprove  the  fact,  she  said,  "  I  move 
we  put  Coonrod  up  to  gittun'  it  out  of  Miss  Vance, 
at  some  of  their  meetin's." 

"  If  you  do,"  said,  Christine,  "  I  '11  kill  you." 

Christine,  however,  had  the  visits  of  Beaton  to 
console  her,  and  if  these  seemed  to  have  no  definite 
aim,  she  was  willing  to  rest  in  the  pleasure  they 
gave  her  vanity  ;  but  Mela  had  nothing.  Sometimes 
she  even  wished  they  were  all  back  on  the  farm. 

"  It  would  be  the  best  thing  for  both  of  you," 
said  Mrs.  Dryfoos,  in  answer  to  such  a  burst  of 
desperation.  "  I  don't  think  New  York  is  any  place 
for  girls." 

"  "Well,  what  I  hate,  mother,'  said  Mela,  '•  is,  it 
don't  seem  to  be  any  place  for  young  men,  either." 
She  found  this  so  good  when  she  had  said  it  that 
she  laughed  over  it  till  Christine  was  angry. 

"  A  body  would  think  there  had  never  been  any 
joke  before." 

"I  don't  see  as  it's  a  joke,"  said  Mrs.  Dryfoos. 
<l  It 's  the  plain  truth." 

"  Oh,  don't  mind  her,  mother,"  said  Mela.  "  She 's 
put  out  because  her  old  Mr.  Beaton  ha'n't  been 
round  for  a  couple  o'  weeks.  If  you  don't  watch 
out,  that  fellow  '11  give  you  the  slip,  yit,  Christine, 
after  all  your  pains." 

"  Well,  there  ain't  anybody  to  give  you  the  slip, 
Mela,"  Christine  clawed  back. 

"  No ;  I  ha'n't  ever  set  my  traps  for  anybody." 
This  was  what  Mela  said  for  want  of  a  better  retort ; 
but  it  was  not  quite  true.  When  Kendricks  came 
VOL.  II— 9  2  M 


194        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

with  Beaton  to  call  after  her  father's  dinner,  bhe 
used  all  her  cunning  to  ensnare  him,  and  she  had 
him  to  herself  as  long  as  Beaton  stayed  ;  Dryfoos 
sent  down  word  that  he  was  not  very  well,  and  had 
gone  to  bed.  The  novelty  of  Mela  had  worn  off  for 
Kendricks,  and  she  found  him,  as  she  frankly  told 
him,  not  half  as  entertaining  as  he  was  at  Mrs. 
Horn's ;  but  she  did  her  best  with  him  as  the  only 
flirtable  material  which  had  yet  come  to  her  hand. 
It  would  have  been  her  ideal  to  have  the  young  men 
stay  till  past  midnight,  and  her  father  come  down- 
stairs in  his  stocking-feet,  and  tell  them  it  was  time 
to  go.  But  they  made  a  visit  of  decorous  brevity, 
and  Kendricks  did  not  come  again.  She  met  him 
afterward,  once,  as  she  was  crossing  the  pavement 
in  Union  Square,  to  get  into  her  coupe",  and  made 
the  most  of  him  ;  but  it  was  necessarily  very  little, 
and  so  he  passed  out  of  her  life  without  having  left 
any  trace  in  her  heart,  though  Mela  had  a  heart 
that  she  would  have  put  at  the  disposition  of  almost 
any  young  man  that  wanted  it.  Kendricks  himself, 
Manhattan  cockney  as  he  was,  with  scarcely  more 
outlook  into  the  average  American  nature  than  if  he 
had  been  kept  a  prisoner  in  New  York  society  all 
his  days,  perceived  a  property  in  her  which  forbade 
him  as  a  man  of  conscience  to  trifle  with  her  ;  some- 
thing earthly  good  and  kind,  if  it  was  simple  and 
vulgar.  In  revising  his  impressions  of  her,  it  seemed 
to  him  that  she  Avould  come  even  to  better  literary 
effect  if  this  were  recognised  in  her;  and  it  made 
her  sacred,  in  spite  of  her  willingness  to  fool  and  to 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       195 

be  fooled,  in  her  merely  human  quality.  After  all, 
he  saw  that  she  wished  honestly  to  love  and  to  be 
loved,  and  the  lures  she  threw  out  to  that  end 
seemed  to  him  pathetic  rather  than  ridiculous  ;  he 
could  not  join  Beaton  in  laughing  at  her ;  and  he 
did  not  like  Beaton's  laughing  at  the  other  girl, 
either.  It  seemed  to  Kendricks,  with  the  code  of 
honour  which  he  mostly  kept  to  himself  because  he 
was  a  little  ashamed  to  find  there  were  so  few  others 
like  it,  that  if  Beaton  cared  nothing  for  the  other 
girl — and  Christine  appeared  simply  detestable  to 
Kendricks — he  had  better  keep  away  from  her,  and 
not  give  her  the  impression  he  was  in  love  with  her. 
He  rather  fancied  that  this  was  the  part  of  a  gentle- 
man, and  he  could  not  have  penetrated  to  that 
sesthetic  and  moral  complexity  which  formed  the  con- 
sciousness of  a  nature  like  Beaton,  and  was  chiefly  a 
torment  to  itself;  he  could  not  have  conceived  of 
the  wayward  impulses  indulged  at  every  moment  in 
little  things,  till  the  straight  highway  was  traversed 
and  wellnigh  lost  under  their  tangle.  To  do  what- 
ever one  likes  is  finally  to  do  nothing  that  one  likes, 
even  though  one  continues  to  do  what  one  will ;  but 
Kendricks,  though  a  sage  of  twenty-seven,  was  still 
too  young  to  understand  this. 

Beaton  scarcely  understood  it  himself,  perhaps 
because  he  was  not  yet  twenty-seven.  He  only 
knew  that  his  will  was  somehow  sick  ;  that  it  spent 
itself  in  caprices,  and  brought  him  no  happiness 
from  the  fulfilment  of  the  most  vehement  wish. 
But  he  was  aware  that  his  wishes  grew  less  and  les* 


196  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

vehement ;  he  began  to  have  a  fear  that  some  time 
he  might  have  none  at  all.  It  seemed  to  him  that 
if  he  could  once  do  something  that  was  thoroughly 
distasteful  to  himself,  he  might  make  a  beginning  in 
the  right  direction  ;  but  when  he  tried  this  on  a 
small  scale  it  failed,  and  it  seemed  stupid.  Some 
sort  of  expiation  was  the  thing  he  needed,  he  was 
sure  ;  but  he  could  not  think  of  anything  in  particu- 
lar to  expiate ;  a  man  could  not  expiate  his  tempera- 
ment, and  his  temperament  was  what  Beaton  decided 
to  be  at  fault.  He  perceived  that  it  went  deeper 
than  even  fate  would  have  gone  ;  he  could  have  ful- 
filled an  evil  destiny  and  had  done  with  it,  however 
terrible.  His  trouble  was  that  he  could  not  escape 
from  himself  ;  and  for  the  most  part,  he  justified 
himself  in  refusing  to  try.  After  he  had  come  to 
that  distinct  understanding  with  Alma  Leighton, 
and  experienced  the  relief  it  really  gave  him,  he 
thought  for  a  while  that  if  it  had  fallen  out  other- 
wise, and  she  had  put  him  in  charge  of  her  destiny, 
he  might  have  been  better  able  to  manage  his  own. 
But  as  it  was,  he  could  only  drift,  and  let  all  other 
things  take  their  course.  It  was  necessary  that  he 
should  go  to  see  her  afterward,  to  show  her  that  he 
was  equal  to  the  event ;  but  he  did  not  go  so  often, 
and  he  went  rather  oftener  to  the  Dryfooses ;  it  was 
not  easy  to  see  Margaret  Vance,  except  on  the  society 
terms.  With  much  sneering  and  scorning,  he  ful- 
filled the  duties  to  Mrs.  Horn  without  which  he  knew 
he  should  be  dropped  from  her  list ;  but  one  might 
go  to  many  of  her  Thursdays  without  getting  many 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        197 

words  with  her  niece.  Beaton  hardly  knew  whether 
he  wanted  many  ;  the  girl  kept  the  charm  of  her 
innocent  stylishness  ;  but  latterly  she  wanted  to  talk 
more  about  social  questions  than  about  the  psychical 
problems  that  young  people  usually  debate  so  per- 
sonally. Son  of  the  working-people  as  he  was, 
Beaton  had  never  cared  anything  about  such 
matters ;  he  did  not  know  about  them  or  wish  to 
know ;  he  was  perhaps  too  near  them.  Besides, 
there  was  an  embarrassment,  at  least  on  her  part, 
concerning  the  Dryfooses.  She  was  too  high-minded 
to  blame  him  for  having  tempted  her  to  her  failure 
with  them  by  his  talk  about  them  ;  but  she  was 
conscious  of  avoiding  them  in  her  talk.  She  had 
decided  not  to  renew  the  effort  she  had  made  in  the 
spring;  because  she  could  not  do  them  good  as 
fellow-creatures  needing  food  and  warmth  and  work, 
and  she  would  not  try  to  befriend  them  socially  ; 
she  had  a  horror  of  any  such  futile  sentimentality. 
She  would  have  liked  to  account  to  Beaton  in  this 
way  for  a  course  which  she  suspected  he  must  have 
heard  their  comments  upon,  but  she  did  not  quite 
know  how  to  do  it ;  she  could  not  be  sure  how  much 
or  how  little  he  cared  for  them.  Some  tentative 
approaches  which  she  made  toward  explanation  were 
met  with  such  eager  disclaim  of  personal  interest 
that  she  knew  less  than  before  what  to  think ;  and 
she  turned  the  talk  from  the  sisters  to  the  brother, 
whom  it  seemed  she  still  continued  to  meet  in  their 
common  work  among  the  poor. 

"  He  seems  very  different,"  she  ventured. 


198        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"Oh,  quite,"  said  Beaton.  "He's  the  kind  of 
person  that  you  might  suppose  gave  the  Catholics 
a  hint  for  the  cloistral  life  ;  he 's  a  cloistered  nature 
— the  nature  that  atones  and  suffers  for.  But  he  's 
awfully  dull  company,  don't  you  think  1  I  never 
can  get  anything  out  of  him." 

"  He 's  very  much  in  earnest." 

"  Remorselessly.  We  've  got  a  profane  and  mun- 
dane creature  there  at  the  office  who  runs  us  all, 
and  it 's  shocking  merely  to  see  the  contact  of  the 
two  natures.  When  Fulkerson  gets  to  joking  Dry- 
foos — he  likes  to  put  his  joke  in  the  form  of  a  pre- 
tence that  Dryfoos  is  actuated  by  a  selfish  motive, 
that  he  has  an  eye  to  office,  and  is  working  up  a 
political  interest  for  himself  on  the  East  side — it 's 
something  inexpressible." 

"  I  should  think  so,"  said  Miss  Vance,  with  such 
lofty  disapproval  that  Beaton  felt  himself  included 
in  it  for  having  merely  told  what  caused  it. 

He  could  not  help  saying,  in  natural  rebellion, 
"Well,  the  manof  one  ideais  always  alittle  ridiculous." 

"  When  his  idea  is  right  ? "  she  demanded.  "  A 
right  idea  can't  be  ridiculous." 

"Oh,  I  only  said  the  man  that  held  it  alone. 
He 's  flat ;  he  has  no  relief,  no  projection." 

She  seemed  unable  to  answer,  and  he  perceived 
that  he  had  silenced  her  to  his  own  disadvantage. 
It  appeared  to  Beaton  that  she  was  becoming  a  little 
too  exacting  for  comfort  in  her  idealism.  He  put 
down  the  cup  of  tea  he  had  been  tasting,  and  said, 
in  his  solemn  staccato,  "  I  must  go.  Good-bye  ! "  and 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.         199 

got  instantly  away  from  her,  with  an  effect  he  had  of 
having  suddenly  thought  of  something  imperative. 

He  went  up  to  Mrs  Horn  for  a  moment's  hail  and 
farewell,  and  felt  himself  subtly  detained  by  her 
through  fugitive  passages  of  conversation  with  half 
a  dozen  other  people.  He  fancied  that  at  crises  of 
this  strange  interview  Mrs.  Horn  was  about  to  be- 
come confidential  with  him,  and  confidential,  of  all 
things,  about  her  niece.  She  ended  by  not  having 
palpably  been  so.  In  fact,  the  concern  in  her  mind 
would  have  been  difficult  to  impart  to  a  young  man, 
and  after  several  experiments  Mrs.  Horn  found  it 
impossible  to  say  that  she  wished  Margaret  could 
somehow  be  interested  in  lower  things  than  those 
which  occupied  her.  She  had  watched  with  grow- 
ing anxiety  the  girl's  tendency  to  various  kinds  of 
self-devotion.  She  had  dark  hours  in  which  she 
even  feared  her  entire  withdrawal  from  the  world 
in  a  life  of  good  works.  Before  now,  girls  had 
entered  the  Protestant  sisterhoods,  which  appeal  so 
potently  to  the  young  and  generous  imagination, 
and  Margaret  was  of  just  the  temperament  to  be 
influenced  by  them.  During  the  past  summer  she 
had  been  unhappy  at  her  separation  from  the  cares 
that  had  engrossed  her  more  and  more  as  their  stay 
in  the  city  drew  to  an  end  in  the  spring,  and  she 
had  hurried  her  aunt  back  to  town  earlier  in  the  fall 
than  she  would  have  chosen  to  come.  Margaret  had 
her  correspondents  among  the  working-women  whom 
she  befriended.  Mrs.  Horn  was  at  one  time  alarmed 
to  find  that  Margaret  was  actually  promoting  a  strike 


200        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

of  the  button-hole  workers.  This,  of  course,  had  its 
ludicrous  side,  in  connection  with  a  young  lady  in 
good  society,  and  a  person  of  even  so  little  humour 
as  Mrs.  Horn  could  not  help  seeing  it.  At  the 
same  time  she  could  not  help  foreboding  the  worst 
from  it ;  she  was  afraid  that  Margaret's  health  would 
give  way  under  the  strain,  and  that  if  she  did  not  go 
into  a  sisterhood  she  would  at  least  go  into  a  decline. 
She  began  the  winter  with  all  such  counteractive 
measures  as  she  could  employ.  At  an  age  when 
such  things  weary,  she  threw  herself  into  the  plea- 
sures of  society  with  the  hope  of  dragging  Margaret 
after  her;  and  a  sympathetic  witness  must  have 
followed  with  compassion  her  course  from  ball  to 
ball,  from  reception  to  reception,  from  parlour-read- 
ing to  parlour-reading,  from  musicale  to  musicale, 
from  play  to  play,  from  opera  to  opera.  She  tasted, 
after  she  had  practically  renounced  them,  the  bitter 
and  the  insipid  flavours  of  fashionable  amusement, 
in  the  hope  that  Margaret  might  find  them  sweet, 
and  now  at  the  end  she  had  to  own  to  herself  that 
she  had  failed.  It  was  coming  Lent  again,  and  the 
girl  had  only  grown  thinner  and  more  serious  with 
the  diversions  that  did  not  divert  her  from  the  bale- 
ful works  of  beneficence  on  which  Mrs.  Horn  felt 
that  she  was  throwing  her  youth  away.  Margaret 
could  have  borne  either  alone,  but  together  they 
were  wearing  her  out.  She  felt  it  a  duty  to  undergo 
the  pleasures  her  aunt  appointed  for  her,  but  she 
could  not  forego  the  other  duties  in  which  she  found 
her  only  pleasure. 


A  HAZARD  OP  NEW  FORTUNES.  201 

She  kept  up  her  music  still  because  she  could 
employ  it  at  the  meetings  for  the  entertainment, 
and,  as  she  hoped,  the  elevation  of  her  working- 
women;  but  she  neglected  the  other  aesthetic  in- 
terests which  once  occupied  her;  and  at  sight  of 
Beaton  talking  with  her,  Mrs.  Horn  caught  at  the 
hope  that  he  might  somehow  be  turned  to  account 
in  reviving  Margaret's  former  interest  in  art.  She 
asked  him  if  Mr.  Wetmore  had  his  classes  that 
winter  as  usual ;  and  she  said  she  wished  Margaret 
could  be  induced  to  go  again  :  Mr.  Wetmore  always 
said  that  she  did  not  draw  very  well,  but  that  she 
had  a  great  deal  of  feeling  for  it,  and  her  work  was 
interesting.  She  asked,  were  the  Leightons  in  town 
again ;  and  she  murmured  a  regret  that  she  had  not 
been  able  to  see  anything  of  them,  without  explain- 
ing why ;  she  said  she  had  a  fancy  that  if  Margaret 
knew  Miss  Leighton,  and  what  she  was  doing,  it 
might  stimulate  her,  perhaps.  She  supposed  Miss 
Leighton  was  still  going  on  with  her  art  ] 

Beaton  said,  Oh  yes,  he  believed  so. 

But  his  manner  did  not  encourage  Mrs.  Horn  to 
pursue  her  aims  in  that  direction,  and  she  said,  with 
a  sigh,  she  wished  he  still  had  a  class ;  she  always 
fancied  that  Margaret  got  more  good  from  his  in- 
struction than  from  any  one  else's. 

He  said  that  she  was  very  good ;  but  there  was 
really  nobody  who  knew  half  as  much  as  Wetmore, 
or  could  make  any  one  understand  half  as  much. 

Mrs.  Horn  was  afraid,  she  said,  that  Mr.  Wetmore 's 
terrible  sincerity  discouraged  Margaret;  he  would 
•  9* 


202       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

not  let  her  have  any  illusions  about  the  outcome  of 
what  she  was  doing ;  and  did  not  Mr.  Beaton  think 
that  some  illusion  was  necessary  with  young  people  1 
Of  course  it  was  very  nice  of  Mr.  Wetmore  to  be  so 
honest,  but  it  did  not  always  seem  to  be  the  wisest 
thing.  She  begged  Mr.  Beaton  to  try  to  think  of 
some  one  who  would  be  a  little  less  severe.  Her 
tone  assumed  a  deeper  interest  in  the  people  who 
were  coming  up  and  going  away,  and  Beaton  per- 
ceived that  he  was  dismissed. 

He  went  away  with  vanity  flattered  by  the  sense 
of  having  been  appealed  to  concerning  Margaret, 
and  then  he  began  to  chafe  at  what  she  had  said  of 
Wetmore's  honesty,  apropos  of  her  wish  that  he  still 
had  a  class  himself.  Did  she  mean,  confound  her ! 
that  he  was  insincere,  and  would  let  Miss  Vance 
suppose  she  had  more  talent  than  she  really  had  ? 
The  more  Beaton  thought  of  this,  the  more  furious 
he  became;  and  the  more  he  was  convinced  that 
something  like  it  had  been  unconsciously  if  not 
consciously  in  her  mind.  He  framed  some  keen 
retorts,  to  the  general  effect  that  with  the  atmosphere 
of  illusion  preserved  so  completely  at  home,  Miss 
Vance  hardly  needed  it  in  her  art  studies.  Having 
just  determined  never  to  go  near  Mrs.  Horn's 
Thursdays  again,  he  decided  to  go  once  more,  in 
order  to  plant  this  sting  in  her  capacious  but  some- 
what callous  bosom ;  and  he  planned  how  he  would 
lead  the  talk  up  to  the  point  from  which  he  should 
launch  it. 

la  the  meantime  he  felt  the  need  of  some  present 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        203 

solace,  such  as  only  unqualified  worship  could  give 
him ;  a  cruel  wish  to  feel  his  power  in  some  direction 
where,  even  if  it  were  resisted,  it  could  not  be  over- 
come, drove  him  on.  That  a  woman  who  was  to 
Beaton  the  embodiment  of  artificiality  should  inti- 
mate, however  innocently — the  innocence  made  it 
all  the  worse — that  he  was  less  honest  than  Wetmore, 
whom  he  knew  to  be  so  much  more  honest,  was 
something  that  must  be  retaliated  somewhere  before 
his  self-respect  could  be  restored.  It  was  only  five 
o'clock,  and  he  went  on  uptown  to  the  Dryfooses', 
though  he  had  been  there  only  the  night  before  last. 
He  asked  for  the  ladies,  and  Mrs.  Mandel  received  him. 

"  The  young  ladies  are  down-town  shopping,"  she 
said,  "but  I  am  very  glad  of  the  opportunity  of  see- 
ing you  alone,  Mr.  Beaton.  You  know  I  lived 
several  years  in  Europe." 

"Yes,"  said  Beaton,  wondering  what  that  could 
have  to  do  with  he'r  pleasure  in  seeing  him  alone. 
"  I  believe  so  1 "  He  involuntarily  gave  his  words 
the  questioning  inflection. 

"You  have  lived  abroad,  too,  and  so  you  won't 
find  what  I  am  going  to  ask  so  strange.  Mr.  Beaton, 
why  do  you  come  so  much  to  this  house  1 "  Mrs. 
Mandel  bent  forward  with  an  aspect  of  lady-like 
interest,  and  smiled. 

Beaton  frowned.     "  Why  do  I  come  so  much  1  " 

"  Yes." 

"Why  do  I .  Excuse  me,  Mrs.  Mandel,  but  will 

you  allow  me  to  ask  why  you  ask  ? " 

"  Oh,    certainly.       There 's    no    reason    why    I 


204  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

shouldn't  say,  for  I  wish  you  to  be  very  frank  with 
me.  I  ask  because  there  are  two  young  ladies  in 
this  house;  and,  in  a  certain  way,  I  have  to  take 
the  place  of  a  mother  to  them.  I  needn't  explain 
why ;  you  know  all  the  people  here,  and  you  under- 
stand. I  have  nothing  to  say  about  them,  but  I 
should  ,not  be  speaking  to  you  now  if  they  were 
not  all  rather  helpless  people.  They  do  not  know 
the  world  they  have  come  to  live  in  here,  and  they 
cannot  help  themselves  nor  one  another.  But  you 
do  know  it,  Mr.  Beaton,  and  I  am  sure  you  know 
just  how  much  or  how  little  you  mean  by  coming 
here.  You  are  either  interested  in  one  of  these 
young  girls  or  you  are  not.  If  you  are,  I  have 

nothing  more  to  say.  If  you  are  not .''  Mrs. 

Mandel  continued  to  smile,  but  the  smile  had  grown 
raore  perfunctory,  and  it  had  an  icy  gleam. 

Beaton  looked  at  her  with  surprise  that  he  gravely 
kept  to  himself.  He  had  always  regarded  her  as  a 
social  nullity,  with  a  kind  of  pity,  to  be  sure,  as  a 
civilised  person  living  among  such  people  as  the 
Dryfooses,  but  not  without  a  humorou.s  contempt; 
he  had  thought  of  her  as  Mandel,  and  sometimes 
as  old  Mandel,  though  she  was  not  half  a  score  of 
years  his  senior,  and  was  still  well  on  the  sunny  side 
of  forty.  He  reddened,  and  then  turned  an  angry 
pallor.  "  Excuse  me  again,  Mrs.  Mandel.  Do  you 
ask  this  from  the  young  ladies  1 " 

"  Certainly  not,"  she  said,  with  the  best  temper, 
and  with  something  in  her  tone  that  convicted 
Beaton  of  vulgarity  in  putting  his  question  of  her 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  205 

authority  in  the  form  of  a  sneer.  "  As  I  have  sug- 
gested, they  would  hardly  know  how  to  help  them- 
selves at  all  in  such  a  matter.  I  have  no  objection 
to  saying  that  I  ask  it  from  the  father  of  the  young 
ladies.  Of  course,  in  and  for  myself  I  should  have 
no  right  to  know  anything  about  your  affairs.  I 
assure  you  the  duty  of  knowing  isn't  very  pleasant." 
The  little  tremor  in  her  clear  voice  struck  Beaton  as 
something  rather  nice. 

"I  can  very  well  believe  that,  Mrs.  Mandel,"  he  said, 
with  a  dreamy  sadness  in  his  own.  He  lifted  his  eyes, 
and  looked  into  hers.  "  If  I  told  you  that  I  cared 
nothing  about  them  in  the  way  you  intimate  1 " 

"  Then  I  should  prefer  to  let  you  characterise 
your  own  conduct  in  continuing  to  come  here  for 
the  year  past,  as  you  have  done,  and  tacitly  leading 
them  on  to  infer  differently."  They  both  mechani- 
cally kept  up  the  fiction  of  plurality  in  speaking  of 
Christine,  but  there  was  no  doubt  in  the  mind  of 
either  which  of  the  young  ladies  the  other  meant. 

A  good  many  thoughts  went  through  Beaton's 
mind,  and  none  of  them  were  flattering.  He  had 
not  been  unconscious  that  the  part,  he  had  played 
toward  this  girl  was  ignoble,  and  that  it  had  grown 
meaner  as  the  fancy  which  her  beauty  had  at  first 
kindled  in  him  had  grown  cooler.  He  was  aware 
that  of  late  he  had  been  amusing  himself  with  her 
passion  in  a  way  that  was  not  less  than  cruel,  not 
because  he  wished  to  do  so,  but  because  he  was 
listless  and  wished  nothing.  He  rose  in  saying,  "  I 
might  be  a  little  more  lenient  than  you  think,  Mrs. 


206  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

Mandel ;  but  I  won't  trouble  you  with  any  palliating 
theory.  I  will  not  come  any  more." 

He  bowed,  and  Mrs.  Mandel  said,  "  Of  course,  it 's 
only  your  action  that  I  am  concerned  with." 

She  seemed  to  him  merely  triumphant,  and  he 
could  not  conceive  what  it  had  cost  her  to  nerve 
herself  up  to  her  too  easy  victory.  He  left  Mrs. 
Mandel  to  a  far  harder  lot  than  had  fallen  to  him, 
and  he  went  away  hating  her  as  an  enemy  who  had 
humiliated  him  at  a  moment  when  he  particularly 
needed  exalting.  It  was  really  very  simple  for  him 
to  stop  going  to  see  Christine  Dryfoos,  but  it  was 
not  at  all  simple  for  Mrs.  Mandel  to  deal  with  the 
consequences  of  his  not  coming.  He  only  thought 
how  lightly  she  had  stopped  him,  and  the  poor 
woman  whom  he  had  left  trembling  for  what  she 
had  been  obliged  to  do  embodied  for  him  the  con- 
science that  accused  him  of  unpleasant  things. 

"  By  heavens  !  this  is  piling  it  up,"  he  said  to- 
himself  through  his  set  teeth,  realising  how  it  had 
happened  right  on  top  of  that  stupid  insult  from 
Mrs.  Horn.  Now  he  should  have  to  give  up  his 
place  on  Every  Other  Week  •  he  could  not  keep  that, 
under  the  circumstances,  even  if  some  pretence  were 
not  made  to  get  rid  of  him  ;  he  must  hurry  and  an- 
ticipate any  such  pretence ;  he  must  see  Fulkerson  at 
once ;  he  wondered  where  he  should  find  him  at  that 
hour.  He  thought,  with  bitterness  so  real  that  it  gave 
him  a  kind  of  tragical  satisfaction,  how  certainly  he 
could  find  him  a  little  later  at  Mrs.  Leighton's ;  and 
Fulkerson's  happiness  became  an  added  injury. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       207 

The  thing  had  of  course  come  about  just  at  the 
wrong  time.  There  never  had  been  a  time  when 
Beaton  needed  money  more ;  when  he  had  spent 
what  he  had  and  what  he  expected  to  have  so  reck- 
lessly. He  was  in  debt  to  Fulkerson  personally 
and  officially  for  advance  payments  of  salary.  The 
thought  of  sending  money  home  made  him  break 
into  a  scoffing  laugh,  which  he  turned  into  a  cough 
in  order  to  deceive  the  passers.  What  sort  of  face 
should  he  go  to  Fulkerson  with  and  tell. him  that  he 
renounced  his  employment  on  Every  Other  Week; 
and  what  should  he  do  when  he  had  renounced  it  *! 
Take  pupils,  perhaps ;  open  a  class  1  A  lurid  con- 
ception of  a  class  conducted  on  those  principles  of 
shameless  flattery  at  which  Mrs.  Horn  had  hinted — 
he  believed  now  she  had  meant  to  insult  him — pre- 
sented itself.  Why  should  not  he  act  upon  the  sug- 
gestion ?  He  thought — with  loathing  for  the  whole 
race  of  women-dabblers  in  art — how  easy  the  thing 
would  be  :  as  easy  as  to  turn  back  now  and  tell  that 
old  fool's  girl  that  he  loved  her,  and  rake  in  half  his 
millions.  Why  should  not  he  do  that  ?  No  one  else 
cared  for  him ;  and  at  a  year's  end,  probably,  one 
woman  would  be  like  another  as  far  as  the  love  was 
concerned,  and  probably  he  should  not  be  more  tired 
if  the  woman  were  Christine  Dryfoos  than  if  she 
were  Margaret  Vance.  He  kept  Alma  Leighton  out 
of  the  question,  because  at  the  bottom  of  his  heart 
he  believed  that  she  must  be  for  ever  unlike  every 
other  woman  to  him. 

The  tide  of  his  confused  and  aimless  reverie  had 

2N 


208       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

carried  him  far  down-town,  he  thought ;  but  when 
he  looked  up  from  it  to  see  where  he  was,  he  found 
himself  on  Sixth  Avenue,  only  a  little  below  Thirty- 
ninth  Street,  very  hot  and  blown ;  that  idiotic  fur 
overcoat  was  stifling.  He  could  not  possibly  walk 
down  to  Eleventh ;  he  did  not  Avant  to  walk  even  to 
the  Elevated  station  at  Thirty-fourth ;  he  stopped  at 
the  corner  to  wait  for  a  surface-car,  and  fell  again 
into  his  bitter  fancies.  After  a  while  he  roused  him- 
self and  looked  up  the  track,  but  there  was  no  car 
coming.  He  found  himself  beside  a  policeman,  who 
was  lazily  swinging  his  club  by  its  thong  from  his 
wrist. 

"  When  do  you  suppose  a  car  will  be  along  ? "  he 
asked,  rather  in  a  general  sarcasm  of  the  absence  of 
the  cars  than  in  any  special  belief  that  the  policeman 
could  tell  him. 

The  policeman  waited  to  discharge  his  tobacco 
juice  into  the  gutter.  "  In  about  a  week,"  he  said 
nonchalantly. 

"What's  the  matter?"  asked  Beaton,  wondering 
what  the  joke  could  be. 

"  Strike,"  said  the  policeman.  His  interest  in 
Beaton's  ignorance  seemed  to  overcome  his  contempt 
of  it.  "  Knocked  off  everywhere  this  morning  except 
Third  Avenue  and  one  or  two  cross-town  lines."  He 
spat  again  and  kept  his  bulk  at  its  incline  over  the 
gutter  to  glance  at  a  group  of  men  on  the  corner 
below.  They  were  neatly  dressed,  and  looked  like 
something  better  than  working  men,  and  they  had  a 
holiday  air  of  being  in  their  best  clothes. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Some  of  the  strikers  ? "  asked  Beaton. 

The  policeman  nodded 

"Any  trouble  yet?" 

"  There  won't  be  any  trouble  till  we  begin  to 
move  the  cars,"  said  the  policeman. 

Beaton  felt  a  sudden  turn  of  his  rage  toward  the 
men  whose  action  would  now  force  him  to  Avalk  five 
blocks  and  mount  the  stairs  of  the  Elevated  station. 
"If  you  'd  take  out  eight  or  ten  of  those  fellows,"  he 
said  ferociously,  "  and  set  them  up  against  a  wall 
and  shoot  them,  you  'd  save  a  great  deal  of  bother." 

"  I  guess  we  sha'n't  have  to  shoot  much,"  said  the 
policeman,  still  swinging  his  locust.  "  Anyway,  we 
sha'n't  begin  it.  If  it  comes  to  a  fight,  though,"  he 
said,  with  a  look  at  the  men  under  the  scooping  rim 
of  his  helmet,  "  we  can  drive  the  whole  six  thousand 
of  'em  into  the  East  Jliver  without  pullin'  a  trigger." 

"  Are  there  six  thousand  in  it  ] " 

"  About." 

"  What  do  the  infernal  fools  expect  to  live  on  ? " 

"  The  interest  of  their  money,  I  suppose,"  said  the 
officer,  with  a  gr'm  of  satisfaction  in  his  irony.  "  It's 
got  to  run  its  course.  Then  they  '11  come  back  with 
their  heads  tied  up  and  their  tails  between  their 
legs,  and  plead  to  be  taken  on  again." 

"  If  I  was  a  manager  of  the  roads,"  said  Beaton, 
thinking  of  how  much  he  was  already  inconvenienced 
by  the  strike,  and  obscurely  connecting  it  as  one  of  the 
series  with  the  wrongs  he  had  suffered  at  the  hands 
of  Mrs.  Horn  and  Mrs.  Mandel,  "  I. would  see  them 
starve  before  I  'd  take  them  back — every  one  of  them." 


210  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Well,"  said  the  policeman  impartially,  as  a  man 
might  whom  the  companies  allowed  to  ride  free,  but 
who  had  made  friends  with  a  good  many  drivers 
and  conductors  in  the  course  of  his  free  riding,  "  I 
guess  that 's  what  the  roads  would  like  to  do  if  they 
could  ;  but  the  men  are  too  many  for  them,  and 
there  ain't  enough  other  men  to  take  their  places." 

"  No  matter,"  said  Beaton  severely.  "  They  can 
bring  in  men  from  other  places." 

"  Oh,  they  '11  do  that  fast  enough,"  said  the  police- 
man. 

A  man  came  out  of  the  saloon  on  the  corner  where 
the  strikers  were  standing,  noisy  drunk,  and  they 
began,  as  they  would  have  said,  to  have  some  fun 
with  him.  The  policeman  left  Beaton,  and  sauntered 
slowly  down  toward  the  group  as  if  in  the  natural 
course  of  an  afternoon  ramble.-  On  the  other  side 
of  the  street  Beaton  could  see  another  officer 
sauntering  up  from  the  block  below.  Looking  up 
and  down  the  avenue,  so  silent  of  its  horse-car 
bells,  he  saw  a  policeman  at  every  corner.  It  was 
rather  impressive. 


III. 


THE  strike  made  a  good  deal  of  talk  in  the  office 
of  Every  Other  Week — that  is,  it  made  Fulkerson  talk 
a  good  deal.  He  congratulated  himself  that  he  was 
not  personally  incommoded  by  it,  like  some  of  the 
fellows  who  lived  up-town,  and  had  not  everything 
under  one  roof,  as  it  were.  He  enjoyed  the  excite- 
ment of  it,  and  he  kept  the  office-boy  running  out 
to  buy  the  extras  which  the  newsmen  came  crying 
through  the  street  almost  every  hour  with  a 
lamentable,  unintelligible  noise.  He  read  not  only 
the  latest  intelligence  of  the  strike,  but  the  editorial 
comments  on  it,  which  praised  the  firm  attitude  of 
both  parties,  and  the  admirable  measures  taken  by 
the  police  to  preserve  order.  Fulkerson  enjoyed 
the  interviews  with  the  police  captains  and  the 
leaders  of  the  strike ;  he  equally  enjoyed  the 
attempts  of  the  reporters  to  interview  the  road 
managers,  which  were  so  graphically  detailed,  and 
with  such  a  fine  feeling  for  the  right  use  of  scare- 
heads  as  to  have  almost  the  value  of  direct  expres- 
sions from  them,  though  it  seemed  that  they  had 
resolutely  refused  to  speak.  He  said,  at  second- 
hand from  the  papers,  that  if  the  men  behaved 


212       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

themselves  vand  respected  the  rights  of  property, 
they  would  have  public  sympathy  with  them  every 
time ;  but  just  as  soon  as  they  began  to  interfere 
with  the  roads'  right  to  manage  their  own  affairs  in 
their  own  way,  they  must  be  put  down  with  an 
iron  hand;  the  phrase  "iron  hand  "did  Fulkerson 
almost  as  much  good  as  if  it  had  never  been  used 
before.  News  began  to  come  of  fighting  between 
the  police  and  the  strikers  when  the  roads  tried  to 
move  their  cars  with  men  imported  from  Philadelphia, 
and  then  Fulkerson  rejoiced  at  the  splendid  courage 
of  the  police.  At  the  same  time  he  believed  what 
the  strikers  said,  and  that  the  trouble  was  not  made 
by  them,  but  by  gangs  of  roughs  acting  without 
their  approval.  In  this  juncture  he  was  relieved 
by  the  arrival  of  the  State  Board  of  Arbitration, 
which  took  up  its  quarters,  with  a  great  many  scare- 
heads,  at  one  of  the  principal  hotels,  and  invited  the 
roads  and  the  strikers  to  lay  the  matter  in  dispute 
before  them ;  he  said  that  now  we  should  see  the 
working  of  the  greatest  piece  of  social  machinery  in 
modern  times.  But  it  appeared  to  work  only  in  the 
alacrity  of  the  strikers  to  submit  their  grievance. 
The  roads  were  as  one  road  in  declaring  that  there 
was  nothing  to  arbitrate,  and  that  they  were  merely 
asserting  their  right  to  manage  their  own  affairs  in 
their  own  way.  One  of  the  presidents  was  reported 
to  have  told  a  member  of  the  Board,  who  personally 
summoned  him,  to  get  out  and  to  go  about  his 
business.  Then,  to  Fulkerson's  extreme  disappoint- 
ment, the  august  tribunal,  acting  on  behalf  of  the 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  213 

sovereign  people  in  the  interest  of  peace,  declared 
itself  powerless  and  got  out,  and  would,  no  doubt, 
have  gone  about  its  business  if  it  had  had  any. 
Fulkerson  did  not  know  what  to  say,  perhaps 
because  the  extras  did  not ;  but  March  laughed  at 
this  result. 

"  It 's  a  good  deal  like  the  military  manoeuvre  of 
the  King  of  France  and  his  forty  thousand  men.  I 
suppose  somebody  told  him  at  the  top  of  the  hill 
that  there  was  nothing  to  arbitrate,  and  to  get  out 
and  go  about  his  business,  and  that  was  the  reason 
he  marched  down  after  he  had  marched  up  with  all 
that  ceremony.  What  amuses  me  is  to  find  that  in 
an  affair  of  this  kind  the  roads  have  rights  and  the 
strikers  have  rights,  but  the  public  has  no  rights  at 
all.  The  roads  and  the  strikers  are  allowed  to  fight 
out  a  private  war  in  our  midst — as  thoroughly  and 
precisely  a  private  war  as  any  we  despise  the  Middle 
Ages  for  having  tolerated — as  any  street  war  in 
Florence  or  Verona — and  to  fight  it  out  at  our  pains 
and  expense,  and  we  stand  by  like  sheep,  and  wait 
till  we  get  tired.  It 's  a  funny  attitude  for  a  city  of 
fifteen  hundred  thousand  inhabitants." 

"  What  would  you  do  1 "  asked  Fulkerson,  a  good 
deal  daunted  by  this  view  of  the  case. 

"Do?  Nothing.  Hasn't  the  State  Board  of 
Arbitration  declared  itself  powerless  1  We  have  no 
hold  upon  the  strikers ;  and  we  're  so  used  to  being 
snubbed  and  disobliged  by  common  carriers  that  we 
have  forgotten  our  hold  on  the  roads,  and  always 
allow  them  to  manage  their  own  affairs  in  their  own 


214  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

way,  quite  as  if  AVG  had  nothing  to  do  with  them,  and 
they  owed  us  no  services  in  return  for  their  privi- 
leges." 

"That 's  a  good  deal  so,"  said  Fulkerson,  disordering 
his  hair.  "  Well,  it 's  nuts  for  the  colonel  nowadays. 
He  says  if  he  was  boss  of  this  town  he  would  seize 
the  roads  on  behalf  of  the  people,  and  man  'em  with 
policemen,  and  run  'em  till  the  managers  had  come 
to  terms  with  the  strikers ;  and  he  'd  do  that  every 
time  there  was  a  strike." 

"  Doesn't  that  rather  savour  of  the  paternalism  he 
condemned  in  Lindau  1 "  asked  March. 

"  I  don't  know.     It  savours  of  horse-sense." 

"You  are  pretty  far  gone,  Fulkerson.  I  thought 
you  were  the  most  engaged  man  I  ever  saw ;  but  I 
guess  you're  more  father-in-lawed.  And  before 
you  're  married  too." 

"  Well,  the  colonel 's  a  glorious  old  fellow,  March. 
I  wish  he  had  the  power  to  do  that  thing,  just  for 
the  fun  of  looking  on  while  he  waltzed  in.  He 's  on 
the  keen  jump  from  morning  till  night,  and  he 's  up 
late  and  early  to  see  the  row.  I  'm  afraid  he  '11  get 
shot  at  some  of  the  fights ;  he  sees  them  all ;  /  can't 
get  any  show  at  them :  haven't  seen  a  brickbat 
shied  or  a  club  swung  yet.  Have  you  ? " 

"  No,  I  find  I  can  philosophise  the  situation  about 
as  well  from  the  papers,  and  that's  what  I  really 
want  to  do,  I  suppose.  Besides  I  'm  solemnly 
pledged  by  Mrs.  March  not  to  go  near  any  sort  of 
crowd,  under  penalty  of  having  her  bring  the  children 
and  go  with  me.  Her  theory  is  that  we  must  all  die 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  215 

together ;  the  children  haven't  been  at  school  since 
the  strike  began.  There 's  no  precaution  that  Mrs. 
March  hasn't  used.  She  watches  me  whenever  I  go 
out,  and  sees  that  I  start  straight  for  this  office." 

Fulkerson  laughed  and  said  :  "  Well,  it 's  probably 
the  only  thing  that 's  saved  your  life.  Have  you 
seen  anything  of  Beaton  lately  ?  " 

"  No.     You  don't  mean  to  say  lie 's  killed  ! " 

"Not  if  he  knows  it.  But  I  don't  know . 

What  do  you  say,  March  ?  What 's  the  reason 
you  couldn't  get  us  up  a  paper  on  the  strike  1 " 

"I  knew  it  would  fetch  round  to  Every  Other 
Week,  somehow." 

"No,  but  seriously.  There'll  be  plenty  of  news- 
paper accounts.  But  you  could  treat  it  in  the 
historical  spirit — like  something  that  happened 
several  centuries  ago ;  De  Foe's  Plague  of  London 
style.  Heigh  ?  What  made  me  think  of  it  was 
Beaton.  If  I  could  get  hold  of  him,  you  two  could 
go  round  together  and  take  down  its  aesthetic 
aspects.  It 's  a  big  thing,  March,  this  strike  is.  I 
tell  you  it 's  imposing  to  have  a  private  war,  as  you 
say,  fought  out  this  way,  in  the  heart  of  New  York, 
and  New  York  not  minding  it  a  bit.  See  ?  Might 
take  that  .view  of  it.  With  your  descriptions  and 
Beaton's  sketches — well,  it  would  just  be  the 
greatest  card  !  Come  !  What  do  you  say  ? " 

"  Will  you  undertake  to  make  it  right  with  Mrs. 
March  if  I  'm  killed  and  she  and  the  children  are 
not  killed  with  me  1 " 

"  Well,  it   would   be   difficult.      I   wonder  how 


216  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

it  would  do  to  get  Kendricks  to  do  the  literary 
part?" 

"  I  Ve  no  doubt  he  'd  jump  at  the  chance.  I  Ve 
yet  to  see  the  form  of  literature  that  Kendricks 
wouldn't  lay  down  his  life  for." 

"  Say ! "  March  perceived  that  Fulkerson  was 
about  to  vent  another  inspiration,  and  smiled 
patiently.  "  Look  here !  What 's  the  reason  we 
couldn't  get  one  of  the  strikers  to  write  it  up 
for  us?" 

"  Might  have  a  symposium  of  strikers  and  presi- 
dents," March  suggested. 

"  No ;  I  'm  in  earnest.  They  say  some  of  those 
fellows — especially  the  foreigners — are  educated 
men.  I  know  one  fellow — a  Bohemian — that  used 
to  edit  a  Bohemian  newspaper  here.  He  could 
write  it  out  in  his  kind  of  Dutch,  and  we  could  get 
Lindau  to  translate  it." 

"I  guess  not,"  said  March  dryly. 

"  Why  not  ?  He  'd  do  it  for  the  cause,  wouldn't 
he  ?  Suppose  you  put  it  up  on  him,  the  next  time 
you  see  him." 

"  I  don't  see  Lindau  any  more,"  said  March.  He 
added,  "  I  guess  he  's  renounced  me  along  with  Mr, 
Dryfoos's  money." 

"  Pshaw  !  You  don't  mean  he  hasn't  been  round 
since  1 " 

"  He  came  for  a  while,  but  he 's  left  off  coming  now. 
I  don't  feel  particularly  gay  about  it,"  March  said, 
with  some  resentment  of  Fulkerson 's  grin.  "  He 's 
left  me  in  debt  to  him  for  lessons  to  the  children." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  217 

Fulkerson  laughed  out.  "  Well,  he  is  the  greatest 
old  fool !  Who  'd  'a'  thought  he  'd  'a'  been  in  earnest 
with  tkose  '  brincibles  '  of  his  ?  But  I  suppose  there 
have  to  be  just  such  cranks  ;  it  takes  all  kinds  to 
make  a  world." 

"  There  has  to  be  one  such  crank,  it  seems,"  March 
partially  assented.  "  One 's  enough  for  me." 

"  I  reckon  this  thing  is  nuts  for  Lindau,  too,"  said 
Fulkerson.  "  Why,  it  must  act  like  a  schooner  of 
beer  on  him  all  the  while,  to  see  '  gabidal '  embar- 
rassed like  it  is  by  this  strike.  It  must  make  old 
Lindau  feel  like  he  Avas  back  behind  those  barricades 
at  Berlin.  Well,  he  's  a  splendid  old  fellow ;  pity 
he  drinks,  as  I  remarked  once  before." 

When  March  left  the  office  he  did  not  go  home 
so  directly  as  he  came,  perhaps  because  Mrs.  March's 
eye  was  not  on  him.  He  was  very  curious  about 
some  aspects  of  the  strike,  whose  importance,  as  a 
great  social  convulsion,  he  felt  people  did  not  recog- 
nise ;  and  with  his  temperance  in  everything,  he 
found  its-  negative  expressions  as  significant  as  its 
more  violent  phases.  He  had  promised  his  wife 
solemnly  that  he  would  keep  away  from  these,  and 
he  had  a  natural  inclination  to  keep  his  promise  ; 
he  had  no  wish  to  be  that  peaceful  spectator  who 
always  gets  shot  when  there  is  any  firing  on  a  mob. 
He  interested  himself  in  the  apparent  indifference  of 
the  mighty  city,  which  kept  on  about  its  business  as 
tranquilly  as  if  the  private  war  being  fought  out  in 
its  midst  were  a  vague  rumour  of  Indian  troubles  on 
the  frontier ;  and  he  realised  how  there  might  once 
VOL.  II.— 10 


218        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

have  been  a  street  feud  of  forty  years  in  Florence 
without  interfering  materially  with  the  industry  and 
prosperity  of  the  city.  On  Broadway  there  was  a 
silence  where  a  jangle  and  clatter  of  horse-car  bells 
and  hoofs  had  been,  but  it  was  not  very  noticeable ; 
and  on  the  avenues,  roofed  by  the  elevated  roads, 
this  silence  of  the  surface  tracks  was  not  noticeable 
at  all  in  the  roar  of  the  trains  overhead.  Some  of 
the  cross-town  cars  were  beginning  to  run  again ; 
with  a  policeman  on  the  rear  of  each  ;  on  the  Third 
Avenue  line,  operated  by  non-union  men,  who  had 
not  struck,  there  were  two  policemen  beside  the 
driver  of  every  car,  and  two  beside  the  conductor, 
to  protect  them  from  the  strikers.  But  there  were 
no  strikers  in  sight,  and  on  Second  Avenue  they 
stood  quietly  about  in  groups  on  the  corners. 
While  March  watched  them  at  a  safe  distance,  a 
car  laden  Avith  policemen  came  down  the  track,  but 
none  of  the  strikers  offered  to  molest  it.  In  their 
simple  Sunday  best,  March  thought  them  very  quiet, 
decent-looking  people,  and  he  could  well  believe  that 
they  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  riotous  outbreaks 
in  other  parts  of  the  city.  He  could  hardly  believe 
that  there  were  any  such  outbreaks  ;  he  began  more 
and  more  to  think  them  mere  newspaper  exaggera- 
tions in  the  absence  of  any  disturbance,  or  the  dis- 
position to  it,  that  he  could  see.  He  walked  on  to 
the  East  River  :  Avenues  A,  B,  and  C  presented  the 
same  quiet  aspect  as  Second  Avenue  ;  groups  of  men 
stood  on  the  corners,  and  now  and  then  a  police- 
laden  car  was  brought  unmolested  down  the  tracks 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  219 

before  them ;  they  looked  at  it  and  talked  together, 
and  some  laughed,  but  there  was  no  trouble. 

March  got  a  cross-town  car,  and  came  back  to  the 
West  side.  A  policeman,  looking  very  sleepy  and 
tired,  lounged  on  the  platform. 

"  I  suppose  you  '11  be  glad  when  this  cruel  war 
is  over,"  March  suggested,  as  he  got  in. 

The  officer  gave  him  a  surly  glance  and  made  him 
no  answer. 

His  behaviour,  from  a  man  born  to  the  joking 
give  and  take  of  our  life,  impressed  March.  It  gave 
him  a  fine  sense  of  the  ferocity  which  he  had  read 
of  the  French  troops  putting  on  toward  the  populace 
just  before  the  coup  d'dtat;  he  began  to  feel  like 
populace  ;  but  he  struggled  with  himself  and  regained 
his  character  of  philosophical  observer.  In  this 
character  he  remained  in  the  car  and  let  it  carry  him 
by  the  corner  where  he  ought  to  have  got  out  and 
gone  home,  and  let  it  keep  on  with  him  to  one  of 
the  furthermost  tracks  westward,  where  so  much  of 
the  fighting  was  reported  to  have  taken  place.  But 
everything  on  the  way  was  as  quiet  as  on  the  East 
side. 

Suddenly  the  car  stopped  with  so  quick  a  turn  of 
the  brake  that  he  was  half  thrown  from  his  seat, 
and  the  policeman  jumped  down  from  the  platform 
and  ran  forward. 


IV. 


DRYFOOS  sat  at  breakfast  that  morning  with  Mrs. 
Mandel  as  usual  to  pour  out  his  coffee.  Conrad  had 
already  gone  down-town;  the  two  girls  lay  abed 
much  later  than  their  father  breakfasted,  and  their 
mother  had  gradually  grown  too  feeble  to  come  down 
till  lunch.  Suddenly  Christine  appeared  at  the  door. 
Her  face  was  white  to  the  edges  of  her  lips,  and  her 
eyes  were  blazing. 

"  Look  here,  father  !  Have  you  been  saying  any- 
thing to  Mr.  Beaton  ? " 

The  old  man  looked  up  at  her  across  his  coffee- 
cup  through  his  frowning  brows.  "No." 

Mrs.  Mandel  dropped  her  eyes,  and  the  spoon 
shook  in  her  hand. 

"  Then  what 's  the  reason  he  don't  come  here  any 
more  ? "  demanded  the  girl ;  and  her  glance  darted 
from  her  father  to  Mrs.  Mandel.  "  Oh,  it 's  you,  is 
it  ?  I  'd  like  to  know  who  told  you  to  meddle  in 
other  people's  business  ? " 

"  I  did,"  said  Dryfoos  savagely.  "  J  told  her  to 
ask  him  what  he  wanted  here,  and  he  said  he  didn't 
want  anything,  and  he  stopped  coming.  That 's  all. 
I  did  it  myself." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  221 

"  Oh,  you  did,  did  you  1 "  said  the  girl,  scarcely 
less  insolently  than  she  had  spoken  to  Mrs.  Mandel. 
"  I  should  like  to  know  what  you  did  it  for  ]  I  'd 
like  to  know  what  made  you  think  I  wasn't  able  to 
take  care  of  myself.  I  just  knew  somebody  had 
been  meddling,  but  I  didn't  suppose  it  was  you.  I 
can  manage  my  own  affairs  in  my  own  way,  if  you 
please,  and  I  '11  thank  you  after  this  to  leave  me  to 
myself  in  what  don't  concern  you." 

"Don't  concern  me  ?  You  impudent  jade  !"  her 
father  began. 

Christine  advanced  from  the  doorway  toward  the 
table ;  she  had  her  hands  closed  upon  what  seemed 
trinkets,  some  of  which  glittered  and  dangled  from 
them.  She  said,  "  Will  you  go  to  him  and  tell  him 
that  this  meddlesome  minx  here  had  no  business  to 
say  anything  about  me  to  him,  and  you  take  it  all 
back  1 " 

"  No  ! "  shouted  the  old  man.     "  And  if " 

"  That 's  all  I  want  of  you  I "  the  girl  shouted  in 
her  turn.  "  Here  are  your  presents."  With  both 
hands  she  flung  the  jewels — pins  and  rings  and  ear- 
rings and  bracelets — among  the  breakfast  dishes, 
from  which  some  of  them  sprang  to  the  floor.  She 
stood  a  moment  to  pull  the  intaglio  ring  from  the 
finger  where  Beaton  put  it  a  year  ago,  and  dashed 
that  at  her  father's  plate.  Then  she  whirled  out  of 
the  room,  and  they  heard  her  running  upstairs. 

The  old  man  made  a  start  toward  her,  but  he  fell 
back  in  his  chair  before  she  was  gone,  and  with  a 
fierce,  grinding  movement  of  his  jaws,  controlled 


222       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

himself.  "  Take — take  those  things  up,"  he  gasped 
to  Mrs.  Mandel.  He  seemed  unable  to  rise  again 
from  his  chair,  but  when  she  asked  him  if  he  were 
unwell,  he  said  no,  with  an  air  of  offence,  and  got 
quickly  to  his  feet.  He  mechanically  picked  up  the 
intaglio  ring  from  the  table  while  he  stood  there,  and 
put  it  on  his  little  finger ;  his  hand  was  not  much 
bigger  than  Christine's.  "  How  do  you  suppose  she 
found  it  out  1 "  he  asked,  after  a  moment. 

"  She  seems  to  have  merely  suspected  it,"  said 
Mrs.  Mandel,  in  a  tremor,  and  with  the  fright  in 
her  eyes  which  Christine's  violence  had  brought 
there. 

"  Well,  it  don't  make  any  difference.  She  had  to 
know,  somehow,  and  now  she  knows."  He  started 
toward  the  door  of  the  library,  as  if  to  go  into  the 
hall,  where  his  hat  and  coat  always  hung. 

"  Mr.  Dryfoos,"  palpitated  Mrs.  Mandel,  "  I  can't 
remain  here,  after  the  language  your  daughter  has 
used  to  me — I  can't  let  you  leave  me — I — I  'm  afraid 
of  her " 

"  Lock  yourself  up,  then,"  said  the  old  man  rudely. 
He  added,  from  the  hall  before  he  went  out,  "  I 
reckon  she  '11  quiet  down  now." 

He  took  the  elevated  road.  The  strike  sesmed  a 
very  far-off  thing,  though  the  paper  he  bought  to 
look  up  the  stock  market  was  full  of  noisy  typo- 
graphy about  yesterday's  troubles  on  the  surface 
lines.  Among  the  millions  in  Wall  Street  there  was 
some  joking  and  some  swearing,  but  not  much  think- 
ing about  the  six  thousand  men  who  had  taken  such 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       223 

chances  in  their  attempt  to  better  their  condition. 
Dryfoos  heard  nothing  of  the  strike  in  the  lobby  of 
the  Stock  Exchange,  where  he  spent  two  or  three 
hours  watching  a  favourite  stock  of  his  go  up  and  go 
down  under  the  betting.  By  the  time  the  Exchange 
closed  it  had  risen  eight  points,  and  on  this  and 
some  other  investments  he  was  five  thousand  dollars 
richer  than  he  had  been  in  the  morning.  But  he 
had  expected  to  be  richer  still,  and  he  was  by  no 
means  satisfied  with  his  luck.  All  through  the 
excitement  of  his  winning  and  losing  had  played 
the  dull,  murderous  rage  he  felt  toward  the  child 
who  had  defied  him,  and  when  the  game  was  over 
and  he  started  home,  his  rage  mounted  into  a  sort 
of  frenzy ;  he  would  teach  her,  he  would  break  her. 
He  walked  a  long  way  without  thinking,  and  then 
waited  for  a  car.  None  came,  and  he  hailed  a  pass- 
ing coupe\ 

"What  has  got  all  the  cars  1 "  he  demanded  of  the 
driver,  who  jumped  down  from  his  box  to  open  the 
door  for  him  and  get  his  direction. 

"  Been  away  1 "  asked  the  driver.  "  Hasn't  been 
any  car  along  for  a  week.  Strike." 

"Oh  yes,"  said  Dryfoos.  He  felt  suddenly  giddy, 
and  he  remained  staring  at  the  driver  after  he  had 
taken  his  seat. 

The  man  asked,  "  Where  to  ?  " 

Dryfoos  could  not  think  of  his  street  or  number, 
and  he  said  with  uncontrollable  fury,  "I  told  you 
once  !      Go  up  to  West  Eleventh,  and  drive  along 
slow  on  the  south  side ;  I  '11  show  you  the  place." 
20 


224       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

He  could  not  remember  the  number  of  Every  Other 
Week  office,  where  he  suddenly  decided  to  stop  before 
he  went  home.  He  wished  to  see  Fulkerson,  and 
ask  him  something  about  Beaton  :  whether  he  had 
been  about  lately,  and  whether  he  had  dropped  any 
hint  of  what  had  happened  concerning  Christine; 
Dryfoos  believed  that  Fulkerson  was  in  the  fellow's 
confidence. 

There  was  nobody  but  Conrad  in  the  counting- 
room,  whither  Dryfoos  returned  after  glancing  into 
Fulkerson's  empty  office.  "  Where 's  Fulkerson  ?  " 
he  asked,  sitting  down  with  his  hat  on. 

"  He  went  out  a  few  moments  ago,"  said  Conrad, 
glancing  at  the  clock.  "  I  'm  afraid  he  isn't  coming 
back  again  to-day,  if  you  wanted  to  see  him." 

Dryfoos  twisted  his  head  side  wise  and  upward  to 
indicate  March's  room.  "That  other  fellow  out, 
too?" 

"  He  went  just  before  Mr.  Fulkerson,"  answered 
Conrad. 

"Do  you  generally  knock  off  here  in  the  middle 
of  the  afternoon  ? "  asked  the  old  man. 

"No,"  said  Conrad,  as  patiently  as  if  his  father 
had  not  been  there  a  score  of  times,  and  found  the 
whole  staff  of  Every  Other  Week  at  work  between  four 
and  five.  "Mr.  March,  you  know,  always  takes  a 
good  deal  of  his  work  home  with  him,  and  I  suppose 
Mr.  Fulkerson  went  out  so  early  because  there  isn't 
much  doing  to-day.  Perhaps  it's  the  strike  that 
makes  it  dull." 

"  The  strike — yes  !  It 's  a  pretty  piece  of  business 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       225 

to  have  everything  thrown  out  because  a  parcel  of 
lazy  hounds  want  a  chance  to  lay  off  and  get  drunk." 
Dryfoos  seemed  to  think  Conrad  would  make  some 
answer  to  this,  but  the  young  man's  mild  face  merely 
saddened,  and  he  said  nothing.  "  I  Ve  got  a  coup6 
out  there  now  that  I  had  to  take  because  I  couldn't 
get  a  car.  If  I  had  my  way  I  ''d  have  a  lot  of  those 
vagabonds  hung.  They're  waiting  to  get  the  city 
into  a  snarl,  and  then  rob  the  houses — pack  of  dirty, 
worthless  whelps.  They  ought  to  call  out  the 
militia,  and  fire  into  'em.  Clubbing  is  too  good  for 
them."  Conrad  was  still  silent,  and  his  father 
sneered,  "But  I  reckon  you  don't  think  so." 

"  I  think  the  strike  is  useless,"  said  Conrad. 

"  Oh,  you  do,  do  you  ?  Comin'  to  your  senses  a 
little.  Gettin'  tired  walkin'  so  much.  I  should  like 
to  know  what  your  gentlemen  over  there  on  the  East 
side  think  about  the  strike,  anyway." 

The  young  fellow  dropped  his  eyes.  "  I  am  not 
authorised  to  speak  for  them." 

"Oh,  indeed!  And  perhaps  you're  not  author- 
ised to  speak  for  yourself  1 " 

"  Father,  you  know  we  don't  agree  about  these 
things.  I'd  rather  not  talk " 

"  But  I  'm  goin'  to  make  you  talk  this  time  ! " 
cried  Dryfoos,  striking  the  arm  of  the  chair  he  sat 
in  with  the  side  of  his  fist.  A  maddening  thought 
of  Christine  came  over  him.  "  As  long  as  you  eat 
my  bread,  you  have  got  to  do  as  I  say.  I  won't 
have  my  children  telling  me  what  I  shall  do  and 
sha'n't  do,  or  take  on  airs  of  being  holier  than  me. 
10* 


226        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

Now,  you  just  speak  up  !  Do  you  think  those 
loafers  are  right,  or  don't  you  1  Come  ! " 

Conrad  apparently  judged  it  best  to  speak.  "  I 
think  they  were  very  foolish  to  strike — at  this  time, 
when  the  elevated  roads  can  do  the  work." 

"  Oh,  at  this  time,  heigh  !  And  I  suppose  they 
think  over  there  on  the  East  side  that  it  'd  been  wise 
to  strike  before  we  got  the  elevated."  Conrad  again 
refused  to  answer,  and  his  father  roared,  "  What  do 
you  think  ? " 

"  I  think  a  strike  is  always  bad  business.  It  '& 
war ;  but  sometimes  there  don't  seem  any  other 
way  for  the  working  men  to  get  justice.  They  say 
that  sometimes  strikes  do  raise  the  wages,  after  a 
while." 

"  Those  lazy  devils  were  paid  enough  already," 
shrieked  the  old  man.  "  They  got  two  dollars  a 
day.  How  much  do  you  think  they  ought  to  'a'  got  ? 
Twenty  ? " 

Conrad  hesitated,  with  a  beseeching  look  at  his 
father.  But  he  decided  to  answer.  "  The  men  say 
that  with  partial  work,  and  fines,  and  other  things, 
they  get  sometimes  a  dollar,  and  sometimes  ninety 
cents  a  day." 

"  They  lie,  and  you  know  they  lie,"  said  his  father, 
rising  and  coming  toward  him.  "  And  what  do  you 
think  the  upshot  of  it  all  will  be,  after  they've 
ruined  business  for  another  week,  and  made  people 
hire  hacks,  and  stolen  the  money  of  honest  men  ? 
How  is  it  going  to  end  ? " 

"They  will  have  to  give  in." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       227 

"  Oh,  give  in,  heigh  !  And  what  will  you  say 
then,  I  should  like  to  know  1  How  will  you  feel  about 
it  then  1  Speak  ! " 

"  I  shall  feel  as  I  do  now.  I  know  you  don't 
think  that  way,  and  I  don't  blame  you — or  any- 
body. But  if  I  have  got  to  say  how  I  shall  feel, 
why,  I  shall  feel  sorry  they  didn't  succeed,  for  I 
believe  they  have  a  righteous  cause,  though  they  go 
the  wrong  way  to  help  themselves." 

His  father  came  close  to  him,  his  eyes  blazing,  his 
teeth  set.  "  Do  you  dare  to  say  that  to  me  ? " 

"  Yes.  I  can't  help  it.  I  pity  them ;  my  whole 
heart  is  with  those  poor  men." 

"  You  impudent  puppy  ! "  shouted  the  old  man. 
He  lifted  his  hand  and  struck  his  son  in  the  face. 
Conrad  caught  his  hand  with  his  own  left,  and  while 
the  blood  began  to  trickle  from  a  wound  that 
Christine's  intaglio  ring  had  made  in  his  temple,  he 
looked  at  him  with  a  kind  of  grieving  wonder,  and 
said,  "  Father  ! " 

The  old  man  wrenched  his  fist  away,  and  ran  out 
of  the  house.  He  remembered  his  address  now, 
and  he  gave  it  as  he  plunged  into  the  coup6.  He 
trembled  with  his  evil  passion,  and  glared  out  of  the 
windows  at  the  passers  as  he  drove  home ;  he  only 
saw  Conrad's  mild  grieving,  wondering  eyes,  and  the 
biood  slowly  trickling  from  the  wound  in  his  temple. 

Conrad  went  to  the  neat  set-bowl  in  Fulkerson's 
comfortable  room,  and  washed  the  blood  away,  and 
kept  bathing  the  wound  with  the  cold  water  till  it 
stopped  bleeding.  The  cut  was  not  deep,  and  he 


228  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

thought  he  would  not  put  anything  on  it.  After  a 
while  he  locked  up  the  office,  and  started  out,  he 
hardly  knew  where.  But  he  walked  on,  in  the 
direction  he  had  taken,  till  he  found  himself  in 
Union  Square,  on  the  pavement  in  front  of  Brentano's. 
It  seemed  to  him  that  he  heard  some  one  calling 
gently  to  him,  "  Mr.  Dryfoos ! " 


V. 


CONRAD  looked  confusedly  around,  and  the  same 
voice  said  again,  "  Mr.  Dryfoos  ! "  and  he  saw  that 
it  was  a  lady  speaking  to  him  from  a  coup6  beside 
the  curbing,  and  then  he  saw  that  it  was  Miss  Vance. 

She  smiled  when  he  gave  signs  of  having  dis- 
covered her,  and  came  up  to  the  door  of  Ler  carriage. 
"  I  am  so  glad  to  meet  you.  I  have  been  longing  to 
talk  to  somebody ;  nobody  seems  to  feel  about  it 
as  I  do.  Oh,  isn't  it  horrible  ?  Must  they  fail  ]  I 
saw  cars  running  on  all  the  lines  as  I  came  across ; 
it  made  me  sick  at  heart.  Must  those  brave  fellows 
give  in  1  And  everybody  seems  to  hate  them  so — I 
can't  bear  it."  Her  face  was  estranged  with  excite- 
ment, and  there  were  traces  of  tears  on  it.  "  You 
must  think  me  almost  crazy  to  stop  you  in  the  street 
this  way ;  but  when  I  caught  sight  of  you  I  had  to 
speak.  I  knew  you  would  sympathise — I  knew  you 
would  feel  as  I  do.  Oh,  how  can  anybody  help 
honouring  those  poor  men  for  standing  by  one 
another  as  they  do  ?  They  are  risking  all  they  have 
in  the  world  for  the  sake  of  justice  !  Oh,  they  are 
true  heroes !  They  are  staking  the  bread  of  their 
wives  and  children  on  the  dreadful  chance  they  've 


230        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

taken !  But  no  one  seems  to  understand  it.  No 
one  seems  to  see  that  they  are  willing  to  suffer  more 
now  that  other  poor  men  may  suffer  less  hereafter. 
And  those  wretched  creatures  that  are  coming  in  to 
take  their  places — those  traitors " 

"  We  can't  blame  them  for  wanting  to  earn  a 
living,  Miss  Vance,"  said  Conrad. 

"  No,  no  !  I  don't  blame  them.  Who  am  I,  to  do 
such  a  thing  ?  It 's  we — people  like  me,  of  my  class 
— who  make  the  poor  betray  one  another.  But  this 
dreadful  fighting — this  hideous  paper  is  full  of  it  ? " 
She  held  up  an  extra,  crumpled  with  her  nervous 
reading.  "  Can't  something  be  done  to  stop  it  1 
Don't  you  think  that  if  some  one  went  among  them, 
and  tried  to  make  them  see  how  perfectly  hopeless 
it  was  to  resist  the  companies,  and  drive  off  the  new 
men,  he  might  do  some  good  ?  I  have  wanted  to 
go  and  try ;  but  I  am  a  woman,  and  I  mustn't !  I 
shouldn't  be  afraid  of  the  strikers,  but  I'm  afraid 
of  what  people  would  say  ! "  Conrad  kept  pressing 
his  handkerchief  to  the  cut  in  his  temple,  which  he 
thought  might  be  bleeding,  and  now  she  noticed 
this.  "  Are  you  hurt,  Mr.  Dryfoos  1  You  look  so 
pale." 

"  No,  it 's  nothing — a  little  scratch  I  've  got." 

"Indeed  you  look  pale.  Have  you  a  carriage? 
How  will  you  get  home  1  Will  you  get  in  here  with 
me,  and  let  me  drive  you  ? " 

"  No,  no,"  said  Conrad,  smiling  at  her  excitement. 
"  I  'm  perfectly  well " 

"And  you  don't  think  I'm  foolish  and  wicked  for 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  231 

stopping  you  here,  and  talking  in  this  way  ?  But 
I  know  you  feel  as  I  do  !  " 

"Yes,  I  feel  as  you  do.  You  are  right — right  in 
every  way — I  mustn't  keep  you — Good-bye."  He 
stepped  back  to  bow,  but  she  put  her  beautiful  hand 
out  of  the  window,  and  when  he  took  it  she  wrung 
his  hand  hard. 

"  Thank  you,  thank  you  !  You  are  good  and  you 
are  just !  But  no  one  can  do  anything.  It's  useless  ! " 

The  type  of  irreproachable  coachman  on  the  box 
whose  respectability  had  suffered  through  the 
strange  behaviour  of  his  mistress  in  this  inter- 
view, drove  quickly  off  at  her  signal,  and  Conrad 
stood  a  moment  looking  after  the  carriage.  His 
heart  was  full  of  joy ;  it  leaped ;  he  thought  it 
would  burst.  As  he  turned  to  walk  away  it 
seemed  to  him  as  if  he  mounted  upon  the  air.  The 
trust  she  had  shown  him,  the  praise  she  had  given 
him ;  that  crush  of  the  hand  :  he  hoped  nothing,  he 
formed  no  idea  from  it,  but  it  all  filled  him  with 
love  that  cast  out  the  pain  and  shame  he  had  been 
suffering.  He  believed  that  he  could  never  be  un- 
happy any  more ;  the  hardness  that  was  in  his  mind 
toward  his  father  went  out  of  it ;  he  saw  how  sorely 
he  had  tried  him ;  he  grieved  that  he  had  done  it, 
but  the  means,  the  difference  of  his  feeling  about  the 
cause  of  their  quarrel,  he  was  solemnly  glad  of  that 
since  she  shared  it.  He  was  only  sorry  for  his  father. 
"  Poor  father ! "  he  said  under  his  breath  as  he  went 
along.  He  explained  to  her  about  his  father  in  his 
reverie,  and  she  pitied  his  father  too. 


232       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

He  was  walking  over  toward  the  West  side,  aim- 
lessly at  first,  and  then  at  times  with  the  longing  to 
do  something  to  save  those  mistaken  ^men  from 
themselves  forming  itself  into  a  purpose.  Was  not 
that  what  she  meant,  when  she  bewailed  her  woman's 
helplessness  1  She  must  have  wished  him  to  try, 
if  he,  being  a  man,  could  not  do  something;  or  if 
she  did  not,  still  he  would  try,  and  if  she  heard  of 
it,  she  would  recall  what  she  had  said,  and  would 
be  glad  he  had  understood  her  so.  Thinking  of 
her  pleasure  in  what  he  was  going  to  do,  he  forgot 
almost  what  it  was ;  but  when  he  came  to  a  street- 
car track  he  remembered  it,  and  looked  up  and 
down  to  see  if  there  were  any  turbulent  gathering 
of  men,  whom  he  might  mingle  with  and  help  to 
keep  from  violence.  He  saw  none  anyAvhere ;  and 
then  suddenly,  as  if  at  the  same  moment,  for  in  his 
exalted  mood  all  events  had  a  dream-like  simul- 
taneity, he  stood  at  the  corner  of  an  avenue,  and  in 
the  middle  of  it,  a  little  way  off,  was  a  street-car, 
and  around  the  car  a  tumult  of  shouting,  cursing, 
struggling  men.  The  driver  was  lashing  his  horses 
forward,  and  a  policeman  was  at  their  heads,  with 
the  conductor,  pulling  them ;  stones,  clubs,  brick- 
bats hailed  upon  the  car,  the  horses,  the  men 
trying  to  move  them.  The  mob  closed  upon 
them  in  a  body,  and  then  a  patrol-wagon  whirled 
up  from  the  other  side,  and  a  squad  of  policemen 
leaped  out,  and  began  to  club  the  rioters.  Conrad 
could  see  how  they  struck  them  under  the  rims  of 
their  hats ;  the  blows  on  their  skulls  sounded  as  if 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       233 

they  had  fallen  on  stone ;  the  rioters  ran  in  all 
directions. 

One  of  the  officers  rushed  up  toward  the  corner 
where  Conrad  stood,  and  then  he  saw  at  his  side  a 
tall  old  man  with  a  long  white  beard.  He  was  call- 
ing out  at  the  policeman  :  "  Ah  yes !  Glup  the 
strikerss — gif  it  to  them  !  Why  don't  you  co  and 
glup  the  bresidents  that  insoalt  your  lawss,  and  gick 
your  Boart  of  Arpidration  out-of-toors  1  Glup  the 
strikerss — they  cot  no  friendts  !  They  cot  no  money 
to  pribe  you,  to  dreat  you  ! " 

The  officer  lifted  his  club,  and  the  old  man  threw 
his  left  arm  up  to  shield  his  head.  Conrad  recog- 
nised Lindau,  and  now  he  saw  the  empty  sleeve 
dangle  in  the  air,  over  the  stump  of  his  wrist.  He 
heard  a  shot  in  that  turmoil  beside  the  car,  and 
something  seemed  to  strike  him  in  the  breast.  He 
was  going  to  say  to  the  policeman,  "Don't  strike 
him !  He's  an  old  soldier !  You  see  he  has  no 
hand !"  but  he  could  not  speak,  he  could  not  move 
his  tongue.  The  policeman  stood  there  ;  he  saw  his 
face :  it  was  not  bad,  not  cruel ;  it  was  like  the  face 
of  a  statue,  fixed,  perdurable  ;  a  mere  image  of  irre- 
sponsible and  involuntary  authority.  Then  Conrad 
fell  forward,  pierced  through  the  heart  by  that  shot 
fired  from  the  car. 

March  heard  the  shot  as  he  scrambled  out  of  his 
car,  and  at  the  same  moment  he  saw  Lindau  drop 
under  the  club  of  the  policeman,  who  left  him  where 
he  fell,  and  joined  the  rest  of  the  squad  in  pursuing 
the  rioters.  The  fighting  round  the  car  in  the 


234       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

avenue  ceased ;  the  driver  whipped  his  horses  into  a 
gallop,  and  the  place  was  left  empty. 

March  would  have  liked  to  run ;  he  thought  how 
his  wife  had  implored  him  to  keep  away  from  the 
rioting;  but  he  could  not  have  left  Lindau  lying 
there  if  he  would.  Something  stronger  than  his 
will  drew  him  to  the  spot,  and  there  he  saw  Conrad 
dead  beside  the  old  man. 


VL 


IN  the  cares  which  Mrs.  March  shared  with  her 
husband  that  night  she  was  supported  partly  by 
principle,  but  mainly  by  the  potent  excitement 
which  bewildered  Conrad's  family  and  took  all 
reality  from  what  had  happened.  It  was  nearly 
midnight  when  the  Marches  left  them  and  walked 
away  toward  the  elevated  station  with  Fulkerson. 
Everything  had  been  done,  by  that  time,  that  could 
be  done  ;  and  Fulkerson  was  not  without  that  satis- 
faction in  the  business-like  despatch  of  all  the  details 
which  attends  each  step  in  such  an  affair,  and  helps 
to  make  death  tolerable  even  to  the  most  sorely 
stricken.  We  are  creatures  of  the  moment ;  we 
live  from  one  little  space  to  another ;  and  only  one 
interest  at  a  time  fills  these.  Fulkerson  was  cheerful 
when  they  got  into  the  street,  almost  gay ;  and  Mrs. 
March  experienced  a  rebound  from  her  depression 
which  she  felt  that  she  ought  not  to  have  experienced. 
But  she  condoned  the  offence  a  little  in  herself,  because 
her  husband  remained  so  constant  in  his  gravity ;  and 
pending  the  final  accounting  he  must  make  her  for 
having  been  where  he  could  be  of  so  much  use  from 
the  first  instant  of  the  calamity,  she  was  tenderly, 


236  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

gratefully  proud  of  all  the  use  he  had  been  to  Conrad's 
family,  and  especially  his  miserable  old  father.  To 
her  mind  March  was  the  principal  actor  in  the  whole 
affair,  and  much  more  important  in  having  seen  it 
than  those  who  had  suffered  in  it.  In  fact,  he  had 
suffered  incomparably.. 

"Well,  well,"  said  Fulkerson.  "They'll  get 
along  now.  We  've  done  all  ice  could,  and  there 's 
nothing  left  but  for  them  to  bear  it.  Of  course  it 's 
awful,  but  I  guess  it  '11  come  out  all  right.  I  mean," 
he  added,  "  they  '11  pull  through  now." 

"  I  suppose,"  said  March,  "  that  nothing  is  put 
on  us  that  we  can't  bear.  But  I  should  think," 
he  went  on  musingly,  "  that  when  God  sees  what 
we  poor  finite  creatures  can  bear,  hemmed  round 
with  this  eternal  darkness  of  death,  He  must  respect 
us." 

"  Basil ! "  said  his  wife.  But  in  her  heart  she 
drew  nearer  to  him  for  the  words  she  thought  she 
ought  to  rebuke  him  for. 

"Oh,  I  know,"  he  said,  "we  school  ourselves  to 
despise  human  nature.  But  God  did  not  make  us 
despicable,  and  I  say  whatever  end  He  meant  us 
for,  He  must  have  some  such  thrill  of  joy  in  our 
adequacy  to  fate  as  a  father  feels  when  his  son 
shows  himself  a  man.  When  I  think  what  we  can 
be  if  we  must,  I  can't  believe  the  least  of  us  shall 
finally  perish." 

"Oh,  I  reckon  the  Almighty  won't  scoop  any  of 
us,"  said  Fulkerson,  with  a  piety  of  his  own. 

"  That  poor  boy's  father  ! "   sighed  Mrs.   March. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  237 

"  I  can't  get  his  face  out  of  my  sight.  He  looked  so 
much  worse  than  death." 

"  Oh,  death  doesn't  look  bad,"  said  March.  "  It 's 
life  that  looks  so  in  its  presence.  Death  is  peace 
and  pardon.  I  only  wish  poor  old  Lindau  was  as 
well  out  of  it  as  Conrad  there." 

"Ah,  Lindau  !  He  has  done  harm  enough,"  said 
Mrs.  March.  "  I  hope  he  will  be  careful  after  this." 

March  did  not  try  to  defend  Lindau  against  her 
theory  of  the  case,  which  inexorably  held  him  re- 
sponsible for  Conrad's  death. 

"  Lindau 's  going  to  come  out  all  right,  I  guess," 
said  Fulkerson.  "  He  was  first-rate  when  I  saw  him 
at  the  hospital  to-night."  He  whispered  in  March's 
ear,  at  a  chance  he  got  in  mounting  the  station 
stairs  :  "  I  didn't  like  to  tell  you  there  at  the  house, 
but  I  guess  you  'd  better  know.  They  had  to  take 
Lindau's  arm  off  near  the  shoulder.  Smashed  all  to 
pieces  by  the  clubbing." 

In  the  house,  vainly  rich  and  foolishly  unfit  for 
them,  the  bereaved  family  Avhom  the  Marches  had 
just  left  lingered  together,  and  tried  to  get  strength 
to  part  for  the  night.  They  were  all  spent  with  the 
fatigue  that  comes  from  heaven  to  such  misery  as 
theirs,  and  they  sat  in  a  torpor  in  which  each  waited 
for  the  other  to  move,  to  speak. 

Christine  moved,  and  Mela  spoke.  Christine  rose 
and  went  out  of  the  room  without  saying  a  word, 
and  they  heard  her  going  upstairs.  Then  Mela  said, 

"  I  reckon  the  rest  of  us  better  be  goun'  too,  father. 
Here,  let 's  git  mother  started." 


238  A  HAZARD  OF  XKW  FORTUNES. 

She  put  her  arm  round  her  mother,  to  lift  her 
from  her  chair,  but  the  old  man  did  not  stir,  and 
Mela  called  Mrs.  Mandel  from  the  next  room.  Be- 
tween them  they  raised  her  to  her  feet. 

"  Ain't  there  anybody  a-goin'  to  set  up  with  it  ? " 
she  asked,  in  her  hoarse  pipe.  "  It  appears  like  folks 
hain't  got  any  feelin's  in  New  York.  Woon't  some 
o'  the  neighbours  come  and  offer  to  set  up,  without 
waitin'  to  be  asked  ?" 

"  Oh,  that 's  all  right,  mother.  The  men  '11  attend 
to  that.  Don't  yon  bother  any,"  Mela  coaxed,  and 
she  kept  her  arm  round  her  mother,  with  tender 
patience. 

"  Why,  Mely,  child  !  I  can't  feel  right  to  have  it 
left  to  hirelin's,  so.  But  there  ain't  anybody  any 
more  to  see  things  done  as  they  ought.  If  Coonrod 
was  on'y  here " 

"  Well,  mother,  you  are  pretty  mixed ! "  said 
Mela,  with  a  strong  tendency  to  break  into  her  large 
guffaw.  But  she  checked  herself  and  said,  "  I  know 
just  how  you  feel,  though.  It  keeps  a-comun'  and 
a-goun' ;  and  it 's  so  and  it  ain't  so,  all  at  once ; 
that's  the  plague  of  it.  Well,  father!  Ain't  you 
goun'  to  come  1  ' 

"  I  'm  goin'  to  stay,  Mela,"  said  the  old  man  gently, 
without  moving.  "  Get  your  mother  to  bed,  that 's 
a  good  girl." 

"  You  goin'  to  set  up  with  him,  Jacob  ? "  asked  the 
old  woman. 

"Yes,  'Liz'beth,  I  '11  set  up.     You  go  to  bed." 

"  Well,  I  will,  Jacob.     And  I  believe  it  '11  do  you 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  239 

good  to  set  up.  I  wished  I  could  set  up  with  you ; 
but  I  don't  seem  to  have  the  stren'th  I  did  when  the 

twins  died.  I  must  git  my  sleep,  so 's  to 1  don't 

like  very  well  to  have  you  broke  of  your  rest,  Jacob, 
but  there  don't  appear  to  be  anybody  else.  You 
wouldn't  have  to  do  it  if  Coonrod  was  here.  There 
I  go  ag'in  !  Mercy  !  mercy  ! " 

"Well,  do  come  along,  then,  mother,"  said  Mela; 
and  she  got  her  out  of  the  room,  with  Mrs.  Mandel's 
help,  and  up  the  stairs. 

From  the  top  the  old  woman  called  down  :  "  You 
tell  Coonrod —  She  stopped,  and  he  heard  her 

groan  out,  "My  Lord  !  my  Lord  !" 

He  sat,  one  silence  in  the  dining-room,  where  they 
had  all  lingered  together,  and  in  the  library  beyond 
the  hireling  watcher  sat,  another  silence.  The  time 
passed,  but  neither  moved,  and  the  last  noise  in  the 
house  ceased,  so  that  they  heard  each  other  breathe, 
and  the  vague,  remote  rumour  of  the  city  invaded  the 
inner  stillness.  It  grew  louder  toward  morning,  and 
then  Dryfoos  knew  from  the  watcher's  deeper 
breathing  that  he  had  fallen  into  a  doze. 

He  crept  by  him  to  the  drawing-room,  where  his 
son  was;  the  place  was  full  of  the  awful  sweetness 
of  the  flowers  that  Fulkerson  had  brought,  and  that 
lay  above  the  pulseless  breast.  The  old  man  turned 
up  a  burner  in  the  chandelier,  and  stood  looking  on 
the  majestic  serenity  of  the  dead  face. 

He  could  not  move  when  he  saw  his  wife  coming 
down  the  stairway  in  the  hall.  She  was  in  her  long 
white  flannel  bedgown,  and  the  candle  she  carried 
2P 


240  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

shook  with  her  nervous  tremor.  He  thought  she 
might  be  walking  in  her  sleep,  but  she  said,  quite 
simply,  "  I  woke  up,  and  I  couldn't  git  to  sleep  ag'in 
without  comin'  to  have  a  look."  She  stood  beside 
their  dead  son  with  him.  "  Well,  he 's  beautiful, 
Jacob.  He  was  the  prettiest  baby  !  And  he  was 
always  good,  Coonrod  was ;  I  '11  say  that  for  him. 
I  don't  believe  he  ever  give  me  a  minute's  care  in 
his  whole  life.  I  reckon  I  liked  him  about  the  best 
of  all  the  childern  ;  but  I  don't  know  as  I  ever  done 
much  to  show  it.  But  you  was  always  good  to  him, 
Jacob  ;  you  always  done  the  best  for  him,  ever  since 
he  was  a  little  feller.  I  used  to  be  afraid  you  'd  spoil 
him  sometimes  in  them  days  ;  but  I  guess  you  're  glad 
now  for  every  time  you  didn't  cross  him.  I  don't 
suppose  since  the  twins  died  you  ever  hit  him  a 
lick."  She  stooped  and  peered  closer  at  the  face. 
"  Why,  Jacob,  what's  that  there  by  his  pore  eye  7 " 
Dryfoos  saw  it  too,  the  wound  that  he  had  feared 
to  look  for,  and  that  now  seemed  to  redden  on  his 
sight.  He  broke  into  a  low,  wavering  cry,  like  a 
child's  in  despair,  like  an  animal's  in  terror,  like  a 
soul's  in  the  anguish  of  remorse. 


VII. 


THE  evening  after  the  funeral,  while  the  Marches 
sat  together  talking  it  over,  and  making  approaches, 
through  its  shadow,  to  the  question  of  their  own 
future,  which  it  involved,  they  were  startled  by  the 
twitter  of  the  electric  bell  at  their  apartment  door. 
It  was  really  not  so  late  as  the  children's  having 
gone  to  bed  made  it  seem ;  but  at  nine  o'clock  it  was 

Ltoo  late  for  any  probable  visitor  except  Fulkerson. 
It  might  be  he,  and  March  was  glad  to  postpone  the 
impending  question  to  his  curiosity  concerning  the 
immediate  business  Fulkerson  might  have  with  him. 
He  went  himself  to  the  door,  and  confronted  there 
a  lady  deeply  veiled  in  black,  and  attended  by  a 
very  decorous  serving-woman. 

"Are  you  alone,  Mr.  March  —  you  and  Mrs. 
March  ? "  asked  the  lady,  behind  her  veil ;  and  as  he 
hesitated,  she  said,  "  You  don't  know  me !  Miss 
Vance ; "  and  she  threw  back  her  veil,  showing  her 
face  wan  and  agitated  in  the  dark  folds.  "I  am 
very  anxious  to  see  you — to  speak  with  you  both. 
May  I  come  in  1 " 

"  Why,  certainly,  Miss  Vance,"  he  answered,  still 
too  much  stupefied  by  her  presence  to  realise  it. 
VOL,  It— U 


242  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

She  promptly  entered,  and  saying,  \vith  a  glance 
at  the  hall  chair  by  the  door,  "My  maid  can  sit 
here  1 "  followed  him  to  the  room  where  he  had  left 
his  wife. 

Mrs.  March  showed  herself  more  capable  of  coping 
with  the  fact.  She  welcomed  Miss  Vance  with  the 
liking  they  both  felt  for  the  girl,  and  with  the 
sympathy  which  her  troubled  face  inspired. 

"  I  won't  tire  you  with  excuses  for  coming,  Mrs. 
March,"  she  said,  "  for  it  was  the  only  thing  left  for 
me  to  do ;  and  I  come  at  my  aunt's  suggestion." 
She  added  this  as  if  it  would  help  to  account  for  her 
more  on  the  conventional  plane,  and  she  had  the 
instinctive  good  taste  to  address  herself  throughout 
to  Mrs.  March  as  much  as  possible,  though  what  she 
had  to  say  was  mainly  for  March.  "  I  don't  know 
how  to  begin — I  don't  know  how  to  speak  of  this 
terrible  affair.  •  But  you  know  what  I  mean.  I  feel 
as  if  I  had  lived  a  whole  lifetime  since  it — happened. 
I  don't  want  you  to  pity  me  for  it,"  she  said,  fore- 
stalling a  politeness  from  Mrs.  March.  "  I  'm  the 
last  one  to  be  thought  of,  and  you  mustn't  mind  me 
if  I  try  to  make  you.  I  came  to  find  out  all  of  the 
truth  that  I  can,  and  when  I  know  just  what  that  is 
I  shall  know  what  to  do.  I  have  read  the  inquest ; 
it 's  all  burnt  into  my  brain.  But  I  don't  care  for 
that — for  myself :  you  must  let  me  say  such  things 
without  minding  me.  I  know  that  your  husband — 
that  Mr.  March  was  there;  I  read  his  testimony; 

and  I  wished  to  ask  him — to  ask  him "  She 

stopped  and  looked  distractedly  about.  "  But  what 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  243 

folly !  He  must  have  said  everything  he  knew — he 
had  to."  Her  eyes  wandered  to  him  from  his  wife, 
on  whom  she  had  kept  them  with  instinctive  tact. 

"I  said  everything — yes,"  he  replied.  "But  if 
you  would  like  to  know — 

"Perhaps  I  had  better  tell  you  something  first. 
I  had  just  parted  with  him — it  couldn't  have  been 
more  than  half  an  hour — in  front  of  Brentano's ;  he 
must  have  gone  straight  to  his  death.  We  were 
talking,  and  I — I  said,  Why  didn't  some  one  go 
among  the  strikers  and  plead  with  them  to  be  peace- 
able, and  keep  them  from  attacking  the  new  men. 
I  knew  that  he  felt  as  I  did  about  the  strikers; 
that  he  was  their  friend.  Did  you  see — do  you 
know  anything  that  makes  you  think  he  had  been 
trying  to  do  that?" 

"I  am  sorry,"  March  began,  "I  didn't  see  him  at 
all  till — till  I  saw  him  lying  dead." 

"My  husband  was  there  purely  by  accident," 
Mrs.  March  put  in.  "  I  had  begged  and  entreated 
him  not  to  go  near  the  striking  anywhere.  And  he 
had  just  got  out  of  the  car,  and  saw  the  policeman 
strike  that  wretched  Lindau — he 's  been  such  an 
anxiety  to  me  ever  since  we  have  had  anything  to 
do  with  him  here  ;  my  husband  knew  him  when  he 
was  a  boy  in  the  West.  Mr.  March  came  home 
from  it  all  perfectly  prostrated ;  it  made  us  all  sick ! 
Nothing  so  horrible  ever  came  into  our  lives  before. 
I  assure  you  it  was  the  most  shocking  experience." 

Miss  Vance  listened  to  her  with  that  look  of 
patience  which  those  who  have  seen  much  of  the 


244       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

real  suffering  of  the  world — the  daily  portion  of  the 
poor — have  for  the  nervous  woes  of  comfortable 
people.  March  hung  his  head;  he  knew  it  would 
be  useless  to  protest  that  his  share  of  the  calamity 
was,  by  comparison,  infinitesimally  small. 

After  she  had  heard  Mrs.  March  to  the  end  even 
of  her  repetitions,  Miss  Vance  said,  as  if  it  were  a 
mere  matter  of  course  that  she  should  have  looked 
the  affair  up,  "  Yes,  I  have  seen  Mr.  Lindau  at  the 
hospital " 

"  My  husband  goes  every  day  to  see  him,"  Mrs. 
March  interrupted,  to  give  a  final  touch  to  the  con- 
ception of  March's  magnanimity  throughout. 

"  The  poor  man  seems  to  have  been  in  the  wrong 
at  the  time,"  said  Miss  Vance. 

"I  could  almost  say  he  had  earned  the  right  to 
be  wrong.  He 's  a  man  of  the  most  generous  in- 
stincts, and  a  high  ideal  of  justice,  of  equity — too 
high  to  be  considered  by  a  policeman  with  a  club 
in  his  hand,"  said  March,  with  a  bold  defiance  of  his 
wife's  different  opinion  of  Lindau.  "It's  the  police- 
man's business,  I  suppose,  to  club  the  ideal  when  he 
finds  it  inciting  a  riot." 

"Oh,  I  don't  blame  Mr.  Lindau;  I  don't  blame 
the  policeman ;  he  was  as  much  a  mere  instrument 
as  his  club  was.  I  am  only  trying  to  find  out  how 
much  I  am  to  blame  myself.  I  had  no  thought  of 
Mr.  Dryfoos's  going  there — of  his  attempting  to  talk 
with  the  strikers  and  keep  them  quiet ;  I  was  only 
thinking,  as  women  do,  of  what  I  should  try  to  do 
if  I  were  a  man.  But  perhaps  he  understood  me  to 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       245 

ask  him  to  go — perhaps  my  words  sent  him  to  his 
death." 

She  had  a  sort  of  calm  in  her  courage  to  know 
the  worst  truth  as  to  her  responsibility  that  forbade 
any  wish  to  flatter  her  out  of  it.  "I'm  afraid," 
said  March,  "that  is  what  can  never  be  known 
now."  After  a  moment  he  added,  "  But  why  should 
you  wish  to  know  ?  If  he  went  there  as  a  peace- 
maker, he  died  in  a  good  cause,  in  such  a  way  as  he 
would  wish  to  die,  I  believe." 

"  Yes,"  said  the  girl ;  "  I  have  thought  of  that. 
But  death  is  awful  ;  we  must  not  think  patiently, 
forgivingly  of  sending  any  one  to  their  death  in  the 
best  cause." 

"I  fancy  life  was  an  awful  thing  to  Conrad 
Dryfoos,"  March  replied.  "He  was  thwarted  and 
disappointed,  without  even  pleasing  the  ambition 
that  thwarted  and  disappointed  him.  That  poor  old 
man,  his  father,  warped  him  from  his  simple,  life- 
long wish  to  be  a  minister,  and  was  trying  to  make 
a  business-man  of  him.  If  it  will  be  any  consolation 
to  you  to  know  it,  Miss  Vance,  I  can  assure  you 
that  he  was  very  unhappy,  and  I  don't  see  how  he 
could  ever  have  been  happy  here." 

"It  won't,"  said  the  girl  steadily.  "If  people 
are  born  into  this  world,  it 's  because  they  were 
meant  to  live  in  it.  It  isn't  a  question  of  being 
happy  here ;  no  one  is  happy,  in  that  old  selfish  way, 
or  can  be ;  but  he  could  have  been  of  great  use." 

"  Perhaps  he  was  of  use  in  dying.  Who  knows  ? 
He  may  have  been  trying  to  silence  Lindau." 


246  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Oh,  Lindau  wasn't  worth  it ! "  cried  Mrs.  March. 

Miss  Vance  looked  at  her  as  if  she  did  not  quite 
understand.  Then  she  turned  to  March.  "  He 
might  have  been  unhappy,  as  we  all  are;  but  I 
know  that  his  life  here  would  have  had  a  higher 
happiness  than  we  wish  for  or  aim  for."  The  tears 
began  to  run  silently  down  her  cheeks. 

"  He  looked  strangely  happy  that  day  when  he 
left  me.  He  had  hurt  himself  somehow,  and  his  face 
was  bleeding  from  a  scratch  ;  he  kept  his  handkerchief 
up ;  he  was  pale,  but  such  a  light  came  into  his  face 
when  he  shook  hands — ah,  I  know  he  went  to  try 
and  do  what  I  said  ! "  They  were  all  silent,  while 
she  dried  her  eyes  and  then  put  her  handkerchief 
back  into  the  pocket  from  which  she  had  suddenly 
pulled  it,  with  a  series  of  vivid,  young-ladyish  ges- 
tures, which  struck  March  by  their  incongruity  with 
the  occasion  of  their  talk,  and  yet  by  their  harmony 
with  the  rest  of  her  elegance.  "  I  am  sorry,  Miss 
Vance,"  he  began,  "  that  I  can't  really  tell  you  any- 
thing more " 

"  You  are  very  kind,"  she  ..said,  controlling  herself 
and  rising  quickly.  "  I  thank  you — thank  you  both 
very  much."  She  turned  to  Mrs.  March  and  shook 
hands  with  her  and  then  with  him.  "  I  might  have 
known — I  did  know  that  there  wasn't  anything  more 
for  you  to  tell.  But  at  least  I  've  found  out  from 
you  that  there  was  nothing,  and  now  I  can  begin  to 
bear  what  I  must.  How  are  those  poor  creatures 
— his  mother  and  father,  his  sisters  1  Some  day, 
I  hope,  I  shall  be  ashamed  to  have  postponed 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.        247 

them  to  the  thought  of  myself ;  but  I  can't  pre- 
tend to  be  yet.  I  could  not  come  to  the  funeral ;  I 
wanted  to." 

She  addressed  her  question  to  Mrs.  March,  who 
answered :  "  I  can  understand.  But  they  were 
pleased  with  the  flowers  you  sent;  people  are,  at 
such  times,  and  they  haven't  many  friends." 

"  Would  you  go  to  see  them  ? "  asked  the  girl. 
"  Would  you  tell  them  what  I  Ve  told  you  ? " 

Mrs.  March  looked  at  her  husband. 

"I  don't  see  what  good  it  would  do.  They 
wouldn't  understand.  But  if  it  would  relieve 

you " 

"  I  '11  wait  till  it  isn't  a  question  of  self-relief," 
said  the  girl.  "  Good-bye  ! " 

She  left  them  to  long  debate  of  the  event.  At 
the  end  Mrs.  March  said,  "  She  is  a  strange  being  ; 
such  a  mixture  of  the  society  girl  and  the  saint." 

Her  husband  answered  :  "  She 's  the  potentiality 
of  several  kinds  of  fanatic.  She's  very  unhappy, 
and  I  don't  see  how  she 's  to  be  happier  about  that 
poor  fellow.  I  shouldn't  be  surprised  if  she  did 
inspire  him  to  attempt  something  of  that  kind." 

"  Well,  you  got  out  of  it  very  well,  Basil.  I 
admired  the  way  you  managed.  I  was  afraid  you  'd 
say  something  awkward." 

"  Oh,  with  a  plain  line  of  truth  before  me,  as  the 
only  possible  thing,  I  can  get  on  pretty  well.  When 
it  comes  to  anything  decorative,  I  'd  rather  leave  it 
to  you,  Isabel." 

She  seemed  insensible  of  his  jest.     "  Of  course  he 


248  A   HAZARD   OF   NEW   FORTUNES. 

was  in  love  with  her.     That  was  the  light  that  came 

into  his  face  when  he  was  going  to  do  what  he 

thought  she  wanted  him  to  do." 

"  And  she — do  you  think  that  she  was " 

"  What  an  idea !     It  wcuM  have  been  perfectly 

grotesque ! " 


vm. 

THEIR  affliction  brought  the  Dryfooses  into 
humaner  relations  with  the  Marches,  who  had 
hitherto  regarded  them  as  a  necessary  evil,  as  the 
odious  means  of  their  own  prosperity.  Mrs.  March 
found  that  the  women  of  the  family  seemed  glad  of 
her  coming,  and  in  the  sense  of  her  usefulness  to  them 
all  she  began  to  feel  a  kindness  even  for  Christine. 
But  she  could  not  help  seeing  that  between  the  girl 
and  her  father  there  was  an  unsettled  account,  some- 
how, and  that  it  was  Christine  and  not  the  old  man 
who  was  holding  out.  She  thought  that  their  sorrow 
had  tended  to  refine  the  others.  Mela  was  much 
more  subdued,  and  except  when  she  abandoned  her- 
self to  a  childish  interest  in  her  mourning,  she  did 
nothing  to  shock  Mrs.  March's  taste,  or  to  seem 
unworthy  of  her  grief.  She  was  very  good  to  her 
mother,  whom  the  blow  had  left  unchanged,  and  to 
her  father,  whom  it  had  apparently  fallen  upon  with 
crushing  weight.  Once,  after  visiting  their  house, 
Mrs.  March  described  to  March  a  little  scene  between 
Dryfoos  and  Mela,  when  he  came  home  from  Wall 
Street,  and  the  girl  met  him  at  the  door  with  a  kind 
of  country  simpleness,  and  took  his  hat  and  stick, 
11* 


250  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

and  brought  him  into  the  room  where  Mrs.  March 
sat,  looking  tired  and  broken. 

She  found  this  look  of  Dryfoos's  pathetic,  and 
dwelt  on  the  sort  of  stupefaction  there  was  in  it; 
he  must  have  loved  his  son  more  than  they  ever 
realised.  "Yes,"  said  March,  "I  suspect  he  did. 
He 's  never  been  about  the  place  since  that  day ;  he 
was  always  dropping  in  before,  on  his  way  uptown. 
He  seems  to  go  down  to  Wall  Street  every  day,  jusfc 
as  before,  but  I  suppose  that 's  mechanical ;  he 
wouldn't  know  what  else  to  do  ;  I  dare  say  it 's  best 
for  him.  The  sanguine  Fulkerson  is  getting  a  little 
anxious  about  the  future  of  Every  Other  Week.  Xow 
Conrad  's  gone,  he  isn't  sure  the  old  man  will  want 
to  keep  on  with  it,  or  whether  he  '11  have  to  look  up 
another  Angel.  He  wants  to  get  married,  I  imagine, 
and  he  can't  venture  till  this  point  is  settled." 

"  It 's  a  very  material  point  to  us,  too,  Basil,"  said 
Mrs.  March. 

"Well,  of  course.  I  hadn't  overlooked  that,  you 
may  be  sure.  One  of  the  things  that  Fulkerson  and 
I  have  discussed  is  a  scheme  for  buying  the  magazine. 
Its  success  is  pretty  well  assured  now,  and  I  shouldn't 
be  afraid  to  put  money  into  it — if  I  had  the  money." 

"  I  couldn't  let  you  sell  the  house  in  Boston,  Basil !" 

"And  I  don't  want  to.  I  wish  we  could  go  back 
and  live  in  it,  and  get  the  rent  too !  It  would  be 
quite  a  support.  But  I  suppose  if  Dryfoos  won't 
keep  on,  it  must  come  to  another  Angel.  I  hope  it 
won't  be  a  literary  one,  with  a  fancy  for  running  my 
department." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       251 

"  Oh,  I  guess  whoever  takes  the  magazine  will  be 
glad  enough  to  keep  you ! " 

"  Do  you  think  so  1  Well,  perhaps.  But  I  don't 
believe  Fulkerson  would  let  me  stand  long  between 
him  and  an  Angel  of  the  right  description." 

"Well,  then,  I  believe  he  would.  And  you've 
never  seen  anything,  Basil,  to  make  you  really  think 
that  Mr.  Fulkerson  didn't  appreciate  you  to  the 
utmost." 

"  I  think  I  came  pretty  near  an  undervaluation  in 
that  Lindau  trouble.  I  shall  always  wonder  what  put 
a  backbone  into  Fulkerson,  just  at  that  crisis.  Fulker- 
son doesn't  strike  me  as  the  stuff  of  a  moral  hero." 

"At  any  rate,  he  was  one,"  said  Mrs.  March,  "and 
that's  quite  enough  for  me." 

March  did  not  answer.  "  What  a  noble  thing  life 
is,  anyway !  Here  I  am,  well  on  the  way  to  fifty, 
after  twenty-five  years  of  hard  work,  looking  forward 
to  the  potential  poor-house  as  confidently  as  I  did  in 
youth.  We  might  have  saved  a  little  more  than  we 
have  saved ;  but  the  little  more  wouldn't  avail  if  I 
were  turned  out  of  my  place  now ;  and  we  should 
have  lived  sordidly  to  no  purpose.  Some  one 
always  has  you  by  the  throat,  unless  you  have  some 
one  else  in  your  grip.  I  wonder  if  that 's  the  attitude 
the  Almighty  intended  his  respectable  creatures  to 
take  toward  one  another  !  I  wonder  if  he  meant 
our  civilisation,  the  battle  we  fight  in,  the  game  we 
trick  in !  I  wonder  if  he  considers  it  final,  and  if 
the  kingdom  of  heaven  on  earth,  which  we  pray 
for " 


252      A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Have  you  seen  Lindau  to-day  ? "  Mrs.  March 
asked. 

"You  inferred  it  from  the  quality  of  my  piety  1" 
March  laughed,  and  then  suddenly  sobered.  "Yes, 
I  saw  him.  It's  going  rather  hard  with  him,  I'm 
afraid.  The  amputation  doesn't  heal  very  well ; 
the  shock  was  very  great,  and  he  's  old.  It  '11  take 
time.  There 's  so  much  pain  that  they  have  to  keep 
him  under  opiates,  and  I  don't  think  he  fully  knew 
me.  At  any  rate,  I  didn't  get  my  piety  from  him 
to-day." 

"  It 's  horrible  !  Horrible  ! "  said  Mrs.  March. 
"  I  can't  get  over  it !  After  losing  his  hand  in  the 
war,  to  lose  his  whole  arm  now  in  this  way !  It 
does  seem  too  cruel !  Of  course  he  oughtn't  to  have 
been  there ;  we  can  say  that.  But  you  oughtn't  to 
have  been  there  either,  Basil." 

"  Well,  I  wasn't  exactly  advising  the  police  to  go 
and  club  the  railroad  presidents." 

"Neither  was  poor  Conrad  Dryfoos." 

"I  don't  deny  it.  All  that  was  distinctly  the 
chance  of  life  and  death.  That  belonged  to  God; 
and  no  doubt  it  was  law,  though  it  seems  chance. 
But  what  I  object  to  is  this  economic  chance-world 
in  which  we  live,  and  which  we  men  seem  to  have 
created.  It  ought  to  be  law  as  inflexible  in  human 
affairs  as  the  order  of  day  and  night  in  the  physical 
world,  that  if  a  man  will  work  he. shall  both  rest 
and  eat,  and  shall  not  be  harassed  with  any  question 
as  to  how  his  repose  and  his  provision  shall  come. 
Nothing  less  ideal  than  this  satisfies  the  reason. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       253 

But  in  our  state  of  things  no  one  is  secure  of  this. 
No  one  is  sure  of  finding  work ;  no  one  is  sure  of 
not  losing  it.  I  may  have  my  work  taken  away 
from  me  at  any  moment  by  the  caprice,  the  mood, 
the  indigestion  of  a  man  who  has  not  the  qualifica- 
tion for  knowing  whether  I  do  it  well  or  ill.  At 
my  time  of  life — at  every  time  of  life — a  man  ought 
to  feel  that  if  he  will  keep  on  doing  his  duty  he 
shall  not  suffer  in  himself  or  in  those  who  are  dear 
to  him,  except  through  natural  causes.  But  no  man 
can  feel  this  as  things  are  now ;  and  so  we  go  on, 
pushing  and  pulling,  climbing  and  crawling,  thrust- 
ing aside  and  trampling  underfoot ;  lying,  cheating, 
stealing ;  and  when  we  get  to  the  end,  covered  with 
blood  and  dirt  and  sin  and  shame,  and  look  back 
over  the  way  we  Ve  come  to  a  palace  of  our  own,  or 
the  poor-house,  which  is  about  the  only  possession 
we  can  claim  in  common  with  our  brother-men,  I 
don't  think  the  retrospect  can  be  pleasing." 

"  I  know,  I  know  ! "  said  his  wife.  "  I  think  of 
those  things  too,  Basil.  Life  isn't  what  it  seems 
when  you  look  forward  to  it.  But  I  think  people 
would  suffer  less,  and  wouldn't  have  to  work  so 
hard,  and  could  make  all  reasonable  provision  for 
the  future,  if  they  were  not  so  greedy  and  so 
foolish." 

"  Oh,  without  doubt !  We  can't  put  it  all  on  the 
conditions ;  we  must  put  some  of  the  blame  on 
character.  But  conditions  make  character ;  and 
people  are  greedy  and  foolish,  and  wish  to  have  and 
to  shine,  because  having  and  shining  are  held  up  to 


254       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

them  by  civilisation  as  the  chief  good  of  life.  We 
all  know  they  are  not  the  chief  good,  perhaps  not 
good  at  all ;  but  if  some  one  ventures  to  say  so,  all 
the  rest  of  us  call  him  a  fraud  and  a  crank,  and  go 
moiling  and  toiling  on  to  the  palace  or  the  poor- 
house.  We  can't  help  it.  If  one  were  less  greedy, 
or  less  foolish,  some  one  else  would  have,  and  would 
shine  at  his  expense.  We  don't  moil  and  toil  to  our- 
selves alone ;  the  palace  or  the  poor-house  is  not 
merely  for  ourselves,  but  for  our  children,  whom  we've 
brought  up  in  the  superstition  that  having  and  shining 
is  the  chief  good.  We  dare  not  teach  them  otherwise, 
for  fear  they  may  falter  in  the  fight,  when  it  comes 
their  turn ;  and  the  children  of  others  will  crowd 
them  out  of  the  palace  into  the  poor-house.  If  we 
felt  sure  that  honest  work  shared  by  all  would  bring 
them  honest  food  shared  by  all,  some  heroic  few  of 
us,  who  did  not  wish  our  children  to  rise  above  their 
fellows — though  we  could  not  bear  to  have  them  fall 
below — might  trust  them  with  the  truth.  But  we 
have  no  such  assurance ;  and  so  we  go  on  trembling 
before  Dryfooses,  and  living  in  gimcrackeries." 

"  Basil,  Basil !  I  was  always  willing  to  live  more 
simply  than  you.  You  know  I  was  ! " 

"  I  know  you  always  said  so,  my  dear.  But  how 
many  bell-ratchets  and  speaking-tubes  would  you 
be  willing  to  have  at  the  street  door  below  1  I  re- 
member that  when  we  were  looking  for  a  flat  you 
rejected  every  building  that  had  a  bell-ratchet  or  a 
speaking-tube,  and  would  have  nothing  to  do  with 
any  that  had  more  than  an  electric  button ;  you 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  255 

wanted  a  hall-boy,  with  electric  buttons  all  over  him. 
I  don't  blame  you.  I  find  such  things  quite  as 
necessaiy  as  you  do." 

"  And  do  you  mean  to  say,  Basil,"  she  asked, 
abandoning  this  unprofitable  branch  of  the  inquiry, 
"  that  you  are  really  uneasy  about  your  place  ?  that 
you  are  afraid  Mr.  Dryfoos  may  give  up  being  an 
Angel,  and  Mr.  Fulkerson  may  play  you  false  ?  " 

"  Play  me  false  1  Oh,  it  wouldn't  be  playing  me 
false.  It  would  be  merely  looking  out  for  himself, 
if  the  new  Angel  had  editorial  tastes,  and  wanted 
my  place.  It 's  what  any  one  would  do." 

"  You  wouldn't  do  it,  Basil ! " 

"  Wouldn't  1 1  Well,  if  any  one  offered  me  more 
salary  than  Every  Other  Week  pays — say  twice  as 
much — what  do  you  think  my  duty  to  my  suffering 
family  would  be  ?  It 's  give  and  take  in  the  business 
world,  Isabel ;  especially  take.  But  as  to  being 
uneasy,  I  'm  not,  in  the  least.  I  Ve  the  spirit  of  a 
lion,  when  it  comes  to  such  a  chance  as  that.  When 
I  see  how  readily  the  sensibilities  of  the  passing 
stranger  can  be  worked  in  New  York,  I  think  of 
taking  up  the  rdle  of  that  desperate  man  on  Third 
Avenue,  who  went  along  looking  for  garbage  in  the 
gutter  to  eat.  I  think  I  could  pick  up  at  least 
twenty  or  thirty  cents  a  day  by  that  little  game, 
and  maintain  my  family  in  the  affluence  it's  been 
accustomed  to." 

"Basil!"  cried  his  wife.  "You  don't  mean  to 
say  that  man  was  an  impostor !  And  I  Ve  gone 
about,  ever  since,  feeling  that  one  such  case  in  a 
2Q 


256  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

million,  the  bare  possibility  of  it,  was  enough  to 
justify  all  that  Lindau  said  about  the  rich  and  the 
poor ! " 

March  laughed  teasingly.  "Oh,  I  don't  say  he 
was  an  impostor.  Perhaps  he  really  was  hungry ; 
but  if  he  wasn't,  what  do  you  think  of  a  civilisation 
that  makes  the  opportunity  of  such  a  fraud  1  that 
gives  us  all  such  a  bad  conscience  for  the  need  which 
is,  that  we  weaken  to  the  need  that  isn't  ?  Suppose 
that  poor  fellow  wasn't  personally  founded  on  fact : 
nevertheless,  he  represented  the  truth ;  he  was  the 
ideal  of  the  suffering  which  would  be  less  effective  if 
realistically  treated.  That  man  is  a  great  comfort 
to  me.  He  probably  rioted  for  days  on  that  quarter 
I  gave  him ;  made  a  dinner  very  likely,  or  a  cham- 
pagne supper ;  and  if  Every  Other  Week  wants  to  get 
rid  of  me,  I  intend  to  work  that  racket.  You  can 
hang  round  the  corner  with  Bella,  and  Tom  can 
come  up  to  me  in  tears,  at  stated  intervals,  and  ask 
me  if  I  Ve  found  anything  yet.  To  be  sure,  we 
might  be  arrested  and  sent  up  somewhere.  But 
even  in  that  extreme  case  we  should  be  provided 
for.  Oh  no,  I  'm  not  afraid  of  losing  my  place ! 
I've  merely  a  sort  of  psychological  curiosity  to 
know  how  men  like  Dryfoos  and  Fulkerson  will 
work  out  the  problem  before  them." 


IX. 


IT  was  a  curiosity  which  Fulkerson  himself 
shared,  at  least  concerning  Dryloos.  "  I  don't  know 
what  the  old  man 's  going  to  do,"  he  said  to  March, 
the  day  after  the  Marches  had  talked  their  future 
over.  "  Said  anything  to  you  yet  1 " 

"  No,  not  a  word." 

"  You  're  anxious,  I  suppose,  same  as  I  am.  Fact 
is,"  said  Fulkerson,  blushing  a  little,  "  I  can't  ask  to 
have  a  day  named  till  I  know  where  I  am  in  con- 
^  nection  with  the  old  man.  I  can't  tell  whether  I  ;ve 
got  to  look  out  for  something  else,  or  somebody  else. 
Of  course,  it's  full  soon  yet." 

"  Yes,"  March  said,  "  much  sooner  than  it  seems 
to  us.  "We  're  so  anxious  about  the  future  that  we 
don't  remember  how  very  recent  the  past  is." 

"That's  something  so.  The  old  man's  hardly 
had  time  yet  to  pull  himself  together.  Well,  I'm 
glad  you  feel  that  way  about  it,  March.  I  guess  it 's 
more  of  a  blow  to  him  than  we  realise.  He  was  a 
good  deal  bound  up  in  Coonrod,  though  he  didn't 
always  use  him  very  well.  Well,  I  reckon  it 's  apt  to 
happen  so  oftentimes ;  curious  how  cruel  love  can 
be.  Heigh  ?  We  're  an  awful  mixture,  March ! " 


258        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Yes,  that 's  the  marvel  and  the  curse,  as  Brown- 
ing says." 

"  Why,  that  poor  boy  himself,"  pursued  Fulker- 
son,  "had  streaks  of  the  mule  in  him  that  could 
give  odds  to  Beaton,  and  he  must  have  tried  the  old 
man  by  the  way  he  would  give  in  to  his  will,  and 
hold  out  against  his  judgment.  I  don't  believe  he 
ever  budged  a  hair's-breadth  from  his  original  posi- 
tion about  wanting  to  be  a  preacher  and  not  want- 
ing to  be  a  business  man.  Well,  of  course  !  /  don't 
think  business  is  all  in  all ;  but  it  must  have  made 
the  old  man  mad  to  find  that  without  saying  any- 
thing, or  doing  anything  to  show  it,  and  after  seem- 
ing to  come  over  to  his  ground,  and  really  coming, 
practically,  Coonrod  was  just  exactly  where  he  first 
planted  himself,  every  time." 

"  Yes,  people  that  have  convictions  are  difficult. 
Fortunately,  they  're  rare." 

"  Do  you  think  so  1  It  seems  to  me  that  every- 
body 's  got  convictions.  Beaton  himself,  who  hasn't 
a  principle  to  throw  at  a  dog,  has  got  convictions  the 
size  of  a  barn.  They  ain't  always  the  same  ones,  I 
know,  but  they  're  always  to  the  same  effect,  as  far 
as  Beaton's  being  Number  One  is  concerned.  The 
old  man 's  got  convictions — or  did  have,  unless  this 
thing  lately  has  shaken  him  all  up — and  he  believes 
that  money  will  do  everything.  Colonel  Woodburn  's 
got  convictions  that  he  wouldn't  part  with  for  untold 
millions.  Why,  March,  you  got  convictions  yourself !" 

"  Have  I  ? "  said  March.  "  I  don't  know  what 
they  are." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  259 

"  Well,  neither  do  I ;  but  I  know  you  were  ready 
to  kick  the  trough  over  for  them  when  the  old  man 
wanted  us  to  bounce  Lindau  that  time." 

"  Oh  yes,"  said  March  ;  he  remembered  the  fact  ; 
but  he  was  still  uncertain  just  what  the  convictions 
were  that  he  had  been  so  staunch  for. 

"  I  suppose  we  could  have  got  along  without  you," 
Fulkerson  mused  aloud.  "  It 's  astonishing  how  you 
always  can  get  along  in  this  world  without  the  man 
that  is  simply  indispensable.  Makes  a  fellow  realise 
that  he  could  take  a  day  off  now  and  then  without 
deranging  the  solar  system  a  great  deal.  Now  here 's, 
Coonrod — or  rather,  he  isn't.  But  that  boy  managed 
his  part  of  the  schooner  so  well  that  I  used  to 
tremble  when  I  thotight  of  his  getting  the  better  of 
the  old  man,  and  going  into  a  convent  or  something 
of  that  kind ;  and  now  here  he  is,  snuffed  out  in 
half  a  second,  and  I  don't  believe  but  what  we  shall 
be  sailing  along  just  as  chipper  as  usual  inside  of 
thirty  days.  I  reckon  it  will  bring  the  old  man  to 
the  point  when  I  come  to  talk  with  him  about  who 's 
to  be  put  in  Coonrod's  place.  I  don't  like  very  well 
to  start  the  subject  with  him ;  but  it 's  got  to  be 
done  some  time." 

"  Yes,"  March  admitted.  "  It 's  terrible  to  think 
how  unnecessary  even  the  best  and  wisest  of  us  is  to- 
the  purposes  of  Providence.  When  I  looked  at  that 
poor  young  fellow's  face  sometimes — so  gentle  and 
true  and  pure — I  used  to  think  the  world  was  appre- 
ciably richer  for  his  being  in  it.  But  are  we  appre- 
ciably poorer  for  his  being  out  of  it  now  ? " 


260  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"No,  I  don't  reckon  we  are,"  said  Fulkerson. 
"And  what  a  lot  of  the  raw  material  of  all  kinds 
the  Almighty  must  have,  to  waste  us  the  way  he 
seems  to  do.  Think  of  throwing  away  a  precious 
creature  like  Coonrod  Dryfoos  on  one  chance  in  a 
thousand  of  getting  that  old  fool  of  a  Lindau  out  of 
the  way  of  being  clubbed  !  For  I  suppose  that  was 
what  Coonrod  was  up  to.  Say !  Have  you  been 
round  to  see  Lindau  to-day  1 " 

Something  in  the  tone  or  the  manner  of  Fulkerson 
startled  March.  "  No  !  I  haven't  seen  him  since 
yesterday." 

"  Well,  I  don't  know,"  said  Fulkerson.  "  I  guess 
I  saw  him  a  little  while  after  you  did,  and  that 
young  doctor  there  seemed  to  feel  kind  of  worried 
about  him.  Or  not  worried,  exactly ;  they  can't 
afford  to  let  such  things  worry  them,  I  suppose; 
but " 

"  He 's  worse  ?  "  asked  March. 

"Oh,  he  didn't  say  so.  But  I  just  wondered  if 
you  'd  seen  him  to-day." 

"  I  think  I  '11  go  now,"  said  March,  with  a  pang 
at  heart.  He  had  gone  every  day  to  see  Lindau,  but 
this  day  he  had  thought  he  would  not  go,  and  that 
was  why  his  heart  smote  him.  He  knew  that  if  he 
were  in  Lindau's  place  Lindau  would  never  have  left 
his  side  if  he  could  have  helped  it.  March  tried  to 
believe  that  the  case  was  the  same,  as  it  stood  now ; 
it  seemed  to  him  that  he  was  always  going  to  or 
from  the  hospital ;  he  said  to  himself  that  it  must 
do  Lindau  harm  to  be  visited  so  much.  But  he 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       261 

knew  that  this  was  not  true  when  he  was  met  at  the 
door  of  the  ward  where  Lindau  lay  by  the  young 
doctor,  who  had  come  to  feel  a  personal  interest  in 
March's  interest  in  Lindau. 

He  smiled  without  gaiety,  and  said,  "  He 's  just 
going." 

"  What !     Discharged  f " 

"  Oh  no.  He  has  been  failing  very  fast  since  you 

saw  him  yesterday,  and  now "  They  had  been 

walking  softly  and  talking  softly  down  the  aisle 
between  the  long  rows  of  beds.  "  Would  you  care 
to  see  him  ? " 

The  doctor  made  a  slight  gesture  toward  the 
white  canvas  screen  which  in  such  places  forms  the 
death-chamber  of  the  poor  and  friendless.  "Come 
round  this  way — he  won't  know  you  !  1  've  got 
rather  fond  of  the  poor  old  fellow.  He  wouldn't 
have  a  clergyman — sort  of  agnostic,  isn't  he  1  A 
good  many  of  these  Germans  are — but  the  young 
lady  who 's  been  coming  to  see  him " 

They  both  stopped.  Lindau's  grand,  patriarchal 
head,  foreshortened  to  their  view,  lay  white  upon 
the  pillow,  and  his  broad  white  beard  flowed  out 
over  the  sheet,  which  heaved  with  those  long  last 
breaths.  Beside  his  bed  Margaret  Vance  was  kneel- 
ing ;  her  veil  was  thrown  back,  and  her  face  was 
lifted;  she  held  clasped  between  her  hands  the 
hand  of  the  dying  man;  she  moved  her  lips  in- 
audibly. 


IN  spite  of  the  experience  of  the  whole  race  from 
time  immemorial,  when  death  comes  to  any  one  we 
know  we  helplessly  regard  it  as  an  incident  of  life, 
which  will  presently  go  on  as  before.  Perhaps  this 
is  an  instinctive  perception  of  the  truth  that  it  does 
go  on  somewhere  ;  but  we  have  a  sense  of  death  as 
absolutely  the  end  even  for  earth,  only  if  it  relates 
to  some  one  remote  or  indifferent  to  us.  March 
tried  to  project  Lindau  to  the  necessary  distance 
from  himself  in  order  to  realise  the  fact  in  his  case, 
but  he  could  not,  though  the  man  with  whom  his 
youth  had  been  associated  in  a  poetic  friendship  had 
not  actually  re-entered  the  region  of  his  affection  to 
the  same  degree,  or  in  any  like  degree.  The  changed 
conditions  forbade  that.  He  had  a  soreness  of  heart 
concerning  him  ;  but  he  could  not  make  sure  whether 
this  soreness  was  grief  for  his  death,  or  remorse  for 
his  own  uncandour  with  him  about  Dryfoos,  or  a 
foreboding  of  that  accounting  with  his  conscience 
which  he  knew  his  wife  would  now  exact  of  him 
down  to  the  last  minutest  particular  of  their  joint 
and  several  behaviour  toward  Lindau  ever  since  they 
had  met  him  in  New  York. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  263 

He  felt  something  knock  against  his  shoulder,  and 
he  looked  up  to  have  his  hat  struck  from  his  head 
by  a  horse's  nose.  He  saw  the  horse  put  his  foot  on 
the  hat,  and  he  reflected,  "  Now  it  will  always  look 
like  an  accordion,"  and  he  heard  the  horse's  driver 
address  him  some  sarcasms  before  he  could  fully 
awaken  to  the  situation.  He  was  standing  bare- 
headed in  the  middle  of  Fifth  Avenue,  and  blocking 
the  tide  of  carriages  flowing  in  either  direction. 
Among  the  faces  put  out  of  the  carriage  windows 
he  saw  that  of  Dryfoos  looking  from  a  coupe".  The 
old  man  knew  him,  and  said,  "  Jump  in  here,  Mr. 
March  " ;  and  March,  who  had  mechanically  picked 
up  his  hat,  and  was  thinking,  "  Now  I  shall  have  to 
tell  Isabel  about  this  at  once,  and  she  will  never  trust 
me  on  the  street  again  without  her,"  mechanically 
obeyed.  Her  confidence  in  him  had  been  undermined 
by  his  being  so  near  Conrad  when  he  was  shot ;  and 
it  went  through  his  mind  that  he  would  get  Dryfoos 
to  drive  him  to  a  hatter's,  where  he  could  buy  a 
new  hat,  and  not  be  obliged  to  confess  his  narrow 
escape  to  his  wife  till  the  incident  was  some  days 
old  and  she  could  bear  it  better.  It  quite  drove 
Lindau's  death  out  of  his  mind  for  the  moment ; 
and  when  Dryfoos  said  if  he  was  going  home  he 
would  drive  up  to  the  first  cross-street  and  turn  back 
with  him,  March  said  he  would  be  glad  if  he  would 
take  him  to  a  hat-store.  The  old  man  put  his  head 
out  again  and  told  the  driver  to  take  them  to  the 
Fifth  Avenue  Hotel.  "  There  's  a  hat-store  around 
there  somewhere,  seems  to  me,"  he  said ;  and  they 


264  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

talked  of  March's  accident  as  well  as  they  could  in 
the  rattle  and  clatter  of  the  street  till  they  reached 
the  place.  March  got  his  hat,  passing  a  joke  with 
the  hatter  about  the  impossibility  of  pressing  his  old 
hat  over  again,  and  came  out  to  thank  Dryfoos  and 
take  leave  of  him. 

"If  you  ain't  in  any  great  hurry,"  the  old  man 
said,  "  I  wish  you  'd  get  in  here  a  minute.  I  'd  like 
to  have  a  little  talk  with  you." 

"Oh,  certainly,"  said  March,  and  he  thought: 
"  It 's  coming  now  about  what  he  intends  to  do  with 
Every  Other  Week.  Well,  I  might  as  well  have  all 
the  misery  at  once  and  have  it  over." 

Dryfoos  called  up  to  his  driver,  who  bent  his  head 
down  sidewise  to  listen  :  "  Go  over  there  on  Madison 
Avenue,  onto  that  asphalte,  and  keep  drivin'  up  and 
down  till  I  stop  you.  I  can't  hear  myself  think  on 
these  pavements,"  he  said  to  March.  But  after  they 
got  upon  the  asphalte,  and  began  smoothly  rolling 
over  it,  he  seemed  in  no  haste  to  begin.  At  last  he 
said,  "  I  wanted  to  talk  with  you  about  that — that 
Dutchman  that  was  at  my  dinner — Lindau,"  and 
March's  heart  gave  a  jump  with  wonder  whether  he 
could  have  already  heard  of  Lindau's  death  ;  but  in 
an  instant  he  perceived  that  this  was  impossible. 
"I  been  talkin'  with  Fulkerson  about  him,  and  he 
says  they  had  to  take  the  balance  of  his  arm  off." 

March  nodded ;  it  seemed  to  him  he  could  not 
speak.  He  could  not  make  out  from  the  close  face 
of  the  old  man  anything  of  his  motive.  It  was  set, 
but  set  as  a  piece  of  broken  mechanism  is  when  it 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  265 

has  lost  the  power  to  relax  itself.  There  was  no 
other  history  in  it  of  what  the  man  had  passed 
through  in  his  son's  death. 

"  I  don't  know,"  Dryfoos  resumed,  looking  aside 
at  the  cloth  window-strap,  which  he  kept  fingering, 
"  as  you  quite  understood  what  made  me  the  maddest. 
I  didn't  tell  him  I  could  talk  Dutch,  because  I  can't 
keep  it  up  with  a  regular  German ;  but  my  father 
wa.s  Pennsylvany  Dutch,  and  I  could  understand 
what  he  was  saying  to  you  about  me.  I  know  I  had 
no  business  to  understood  it,  after  I  let  him  think  I 
couldn't ;  but  I  did,  and  I  didn't  like  very  well  to 
have  a  man  callin'  me  a  traitor  and  a  tyrant  at  my 
own  table.  Well,  I  look  at  it  differently  now,  and  I 
reckon  I  had  better  have  tried  to  put  up  with  it ;  and 

I  would,  if  I  could  have  known "  He  stopped 

with  a  quivering  lip,  and  then  went  on.  "Then, 
again,  I  didn't  like  his  talkin'  that  paternalism  of 
his.  I  always  heard  it  was  the  worst  kind  of  thing 
for  the  country  ;  I  was  brought  up  to  think  the  best 
government  was  the  one  that  governs  the  least; 
and  I  didn't  want  to  hear  that  kind  of  talk  from 
a  man  that  was  livin'  on  my  money.  I  couldn't 
bear  it  from  him.  Or  I  thought  I  couldn't  before — 

before "  He  stopped  again,  and  gulped.  "I 

reckon  now  there  ain't  anything  I  couldn't  bear." 

March  was  moved  by  the  blunt  words  and  the 
mute  stare  forward  with  which  they  ended.  "  Mr. 
Dryfoos,  I  didn't  know  that  you  understood  Lin- 
dau's  German,  or  I  shouldn't  have  allowed  him — 
he  wouldn't  have  allowed  himself — to  go  on.  He 
VOL.  II.— 12 


266       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

wouldn't  have  knowingly  abused  his  position  of 
guest  to  censure  you,  no  matter  how  much  he 
condemned  you." 

"  I  don't  care  for  it  now,"  said  Dryfoos.  "  It 's  all 
past  and  gone,  as  far  as  I  'm  concerned ;  but  I 
wanted  you  to  see  that  I  wasn't  tryin'  to  punish  him 
for  his  opinions,  as  you  said." 

"No;  I  see  now,"  March  assented,  though  he 
thought  his  position  still  justified.  "  I  wish " 

"I  don't  know  as  I  understand  much  about  his 
opinions,  anyway ;  but  I  ain't  ready  to  say  I  want 
the  men  dependent  on  me  to  manage  my  business 
for  me.  I  always  tried  to  do  the  square  thing  by 
my  hands ;  and  in  that  particular  case  out  there,  I 
took  on  all  the  old  hands  just  as  fast  as  they  left 
their  Union.  As  for  the  game  I  came  on  them,  it 
was  dog  eat  dog,  anyway." 

March  could  have  laughed  to  think  how  far  this 
old  man  was  from  even  conceiving  of  Lindau's  point 
of  view,  and  how  he  was  saying  the  worst  of  himself 
that  Lindau  could  have  said  of  him.  No  one  could 
have  characterised  the  kind  of  thing  he  had  done 
more  severely  than  he  when  he  called  it  dog  eat  dog. 

"  There 's  a  great  deal  to  be  said  on  both  sides," 
March  began,  hoping  to  lead  up  through  this  gener- 
ality to  the  fact  of  Lindau's  death ;  but  the  old  man 
went  on — 

"  Well,  a*ll  I  wanted  him  to  know  is  that  I  wasn't 
trying  to  punish  him  for  what  he  said  about  things 
in  general.  You  naturally  got  that  idea,  I  reckon ; 
but  I  always  went  in  for  lettin'  people  say  what 


HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       267 

they  please  and  think  what  they  please;  it's  the 
only  way  in  a  free  country." 

"I'm  afraid,  Mr.  Dryfoos,  that  it  would  make 
little  difference  to  Lindau  now " 

"I  don't  suppose  he  bears  malice  for  it,"  said 
Dryfoos,  "  but  what  I  want  to  do  is  to  have  him 
told  so.  He  could  understand  just  why  I  didn't 
want  to  be  called  hard  names,  and  yet  I  didn't 
object  to  his  thinkin'  whatever  he  pleased.  I  'd  like 
him  to  know " 

"  No  one  can  speak  to  him,  no  one  can  tell  him," 
March  began  again,  but  again  Dryfoos  prevented 
him  from  going  on. 

"I  understand  it's  a  delicate  thing;  and  I'm  not 
askin'  you  to  do  it.  What  I  would  really  like  to  do 
— if  you  think  he  could  be  prepared  for  it,  some 
way,  and  could  stand  it — would  be  to  go  to  him 
myself,  and  tell  him  just  what  the  trouble  was. 
I  'm  in  hopes,  if  I  done  that,  he  could  see  how  I  felt 
about  it." 

A  picture  of  Dryfoos  going  to  the  dead  Lindau 
with  his  vain  regrets  presented  itself  to  March,  and 
he  tried  once  more  to  make  the  old  man  understand. 
"Mr.  Dryfoos,"  he  said,  "Lindau  is  past  all  that 
for  ever,"  and  he  felt  the  ghastly  comedy  of  it  when 
Dryfoos  continued,  without  heeding  him — 

"I  got  a  particular  reason  why  I  want  him  to 
believe  it  wasn't  his  ideas  I  objected  to — them  ideas 
of  his  about  the  government  carryin'  everything  on 
and  givin'  work.  I  don't  understand  'em  exactly, 
but  I  found  a  writin' — among — my  son's — things" 


268  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

(he  seemed  to  force  the. words  through  his  teeth), 
"  and  I  reckon  he — thought — that  way.  Kind  of  a 
diary — where  he — put  down — his  thoughts.  My  son 
and  me — we  differed  about  a  good — many  things." 
His  chin  shook,  and  from  time  to  time  he  stopped. 
"  I  wasn't  very  good  to  him,  I  reckon ;  I  crossed 
him  where  I  guess  I  got  no  business  to  crossed  him ; 
but  I  thought  everything  of — Coonrod.  He  was  the 
best  boy,  from  a  baby,  that  ever  was ;  just  so  patient 
and  mild,  and  done  whatever  he  was  told.  I  ought 
to  V  let  him  been  a  preacher  !  O  my  son,  my  son  ! " 
The  sobs  could  not  be  kept  back  any  longer ;  they 
shook  the  old  man  with  a  violence  that  made  March 
afraid  for  him  ;  but  he  controlled  himself  at  last 
with  a  series  of  hoarse  sounds  like  barks.  "  Well, 
it 's  all  past  and  gone !  But  as  I  understand  you 
from  what  }rou  saw,  when — Coonrod — was — killed, 
he  was  try  in'  to  save  that  old  man  from  trouble  1 " 

"  Yes,  yes  !    It  seemed  so  to  me." 

"  That  '11  do,  then  !  I  want  you  to  have  him 
come  back  and  write  for  the  book  when  he  gets  well. 
I  want  you  to  find  out  and  let  me  know  if  there 's 
anything  I  can  do  for  him.  I  '11  feel  as  if  I  done  it 
— for  my — son.  I  '11  take  him  into  my  own  house, 
and  do  for  him  there,  if  you  say  so,  when  he  gets  so 
he  can  be  moved.  I'll  wait  on  him  myself.  It's 
what  Coonrod  'd  do,  if  he  was  here.  I  don't  feel  any 
hardness  to  him  because  it  was  him  that  got  Coonrod 
killed,  as  you  might  say,  in  one  sense  of  the  term ; 
but  I  Ve  tried  to  think  it  out,  and  I  feel  like  I  was 
all  the  more  beholden  to  him.  because  my  son  died 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  269 

tryin'  to  save  him.  Whatever  I  do,  I  '11  be  doin'  it 
for  Coonrod,  and  that 's  enough  for  me."  He  seemed 
to  have  finished,  and  he  turned  to  March  as  if  to 
hear  what  he  had  to  say. 

March  hesitated.     "  I  'm  afraid,  Mr.  Dryfoos 

Didn't  Fulkerson  tell  you  that  Lindau  was  very  sick!" 
"  Yes,  of  course.  But  he 's  all  right,  he  said." 
Now  it  had  to  come,  though  the  fact  had  been 
latterly  playing  fast  and  loose  with  March's  con- 
sciousness. Something  almost  made  him  smile ;  the 
willingness  he  had  once  felt  to  give  this  old  man 
pain ;  then  he  consoled  himself  by  thinking  that  at 
least  he  was  not  obliged  to  meet  Dryfoos's  wish  to 
make  atonement  with  the  fact  that  Lindau  had 
renounced  him,  and  would  on  no  terms  work  for 
such  a  man  as  he,  or  suffer  any  kindness  from  him. 
In  this  light  Lindau  seemed  the  harder  of  the  two, 
and  March  had  the  momentary  force  to  say :  "  Mr. 
Dryfoos — it  can't  be.  Lindau — I  have  just  come 
from  him — is  dead." 


XL 


"  How  did  he  take  it  ?  How  could  he  bear  it  ? 
0  Basil !  I  wonder  you  could  have  the  heart  to  say 
it  to  him.  It  was  cruel ! " 

"Yes,  cruel  enough,  my  dear,"  March  owned  to 
his  wife,  when  they  talked  the  matter  over  on  his 
return  home.  He  could  not  wait  till  the  children 
were  out  of  the  way,  and  afterward  neither  he  nor 
his  wife  was  sorry  that  he  had  spoken  of  it  before 
them.  The  girl  cried  plentifully  for  her  old  friend 
who  was  dead,  and  said  she  hated  Mr.  Dryfoos,  and 
then  was  sorry  for  him,  too ;  and  the  boy  listened 
to  all,  and  spoke  with  a  serious  sense  that  pleased 
his  father.  "  But  as  to  how  he  took  it,"  March  went 
on  to  answer  his  wife's  question  about  Dryfoos,  "how 
do  any  of  us  take  a  thing  that  hurts  ?  Some  of  us 
cry  out,  and  some  of  us — don't.  Dryfoos  drew  a 
kind  of  long,  quivering  breath,  as  a  child  does  when 
it  grieves — there 's  something  curiously  simple  and 
primitive  about  him — and  didn't  say  anything. 
After  a  while  he  asked  me  how  he  could  see  the 
people  at  the  hospital  about  the  remains;  I  gave 
him  my  card  to  the  young  doctor  there  that  had 
charge  of  Lindau.  I  suppose  he  was  still  carrying 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  271 

forward  his  plan  of  reparation  in  his  mind — to  the 
dead  for  the  dead.  But  how  useless !  If  he  could 
have  taken  the  living  Lindau  home  with  him,  and 
cared  for  him  all  his  days,  what  would  it  have 
profited  the  gentle  creature  whose  life  his  worldly 
ambition  vexed  and  thwarted  here  ?  He  might  as 
well  offer  a  sacrifice  at  Conrad's  grave.  Children," 
said  March,  turning  to  them,  "  death  is  an  exile  that 
no  remorse  and  no  love  can  reach.  Kemember  that, 
and  be  good  to  every  one  here  on  earth,  for  your 
longing  to  retrieve  any  harshness  or  unkindness  to 
the  dead  will  be  the  very  ecstasy  of  anguish  to  you. 
I  wonder,"  he  mused,  "  if  one  of  the  reasons  why 
we're  shut  up  to  our  ignorance  of  what  is  to  be 
hereafter  isn't  that  we  should  be  still  more  brutal  to 
one  another  here,  in  the  hope  of  making  reparation 
somewhere  else.  Perhaps,  if  we  ever  come  to  obey 
the  law  of  love  on  earth,  the  mystery  of  death  will 
be  taken  away." 

"  Well " — the  ancestral  Puritanism  spoke  in  Mrs. 
March — "  these  two  old  men  have  been  terribly 
punished.  They  have  both  been  violent  and  wilful, 
and  they  have  both  been  punished.  No  one  need 
ever  tell  me  there  is  not  a  moral  government  of  the 
universe  ! " 

March  always  disliked  to  hear  her  talk  in  this 
way,  which  did  both  her  head  and  heart  injustice. 
"And  Conrad,"  he  said,  "what  was  he  punished 
for  ?" 

"He?"    she  answered,   in  an    exaltation:    "he 
suffered  for  the  sins  of  others." 
2R 


272       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

"  Ah,  well,  if  you  put  it  in  that  way,  yes.  That 
goes  on  continually.  That 's  another  mystery." 

He  fell  to  brooding  on  it,  and  presently  he  heard 
his  son  saying,  "  I  suppose,  papa,  that  Mr.  Lindau 
died  in  a  bad  cause  ? " 

March  was  startled.  He  had  always  been  so 
sorry  for  Lindau,  and  admired  his  courage  and 
generosity  so  much,  that  he  had  never  fairly  con- 
sidered this  question.  "  Why,  yes,"  he  answered ; 
"he  died  in  the  cause  of  disorder;  he  was  trying 
to  obstruct  the  law.  No  doubt  there  was  a  wrong 
there,  an  inconsistency  and  an  injustice  that  he  felt 
keenly;  but  it  could  not  be  reached  in  his  way 
without  greater  wrong." 

"  Yes ;  that 's  what  I  thought,"  said  the  boy. 
"And  what's  the  use  of  our  ever  fighting  about 
anything  in  America  ?  I  always  thought  we  could 
vote  anything  we  wanted." 

"  We  can,  if  we  're  honest,  and  don't  buy  and  sell 
one  another's  votes,"  said  his  father.  "And  men 
like  Lindau,  who  renounce  the  American  means  as 
hopeless,  and  let  their  love  of  justice  hurry  them 
into  sympathy  with  violence,  yes,  they  are  wrong ; 
and  poor  Lindau  did  die  in  a  bad  cause,  as  you  say, 
Tom." 

"I  think  Conrad  had  no  business  there,  or  you 
either,  Basil,"  said  his  wife. 

"Oh,  I  don't  defend  myself,"  said  March.  "I 
was  there  in  the  cause  of  literary  curiosity  and  of 
conjugal  disobedience.  But  Conrad — yes,  he  had 
some  business  there :  it  was  his  business  to  suffer 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       273 

there  for  the  sins  of  others.  Isabel,  we  can't  throw 
aside  that  old  doctrine  of  the  Atonement  yet.  The 
life  of  Christ,  it  wasn't  only  in  healing  the  sick  and 
going  about  to  do  good ;  it  was  suffering  for  the  sins 
of  others !  That 's  as  great  a  mystery  as  the 
mystery  of  death.  Why  should  there  be  such  a 
principle  in  the  world  ?  But  it 's  been  felt,  and 
more  or  less  dumbly,  blindly  recognised  ever  since 
Calvary.  If  we  love  mankind,  pity  them,  we  even 
wish  to  suffer  for  them.  That's  what  has  created 
the  religious  orders  in  all  times — the  brotherhoods 
and  sisterhoods  that  belong  to  our  day  as  much  as 
to  the  mediaeval  past.  That  's  what  is  driving  a 
girl  like  Margaret  Vance,  who  has  everything  that 
the  world  can  offer  her  young  beauty,  on  to  the 
work  of  a  Sister  of  Charity  among  the  poor  and  the 
dying." 

"  Yes,  yes  ! "  cried  Mrs.  March.  "  How — how  did 
she  look  there,  Basil  1 "  She  had  her  feminine  mis- 
givings; she  was  not  sure  but  the  girl  was  something 
of  a  poseuse,  and  enjoyed  the  picturesqueness,  as 
well  as  the  pain ;  and  she  wished  to  be  convinced 
that  it  was  not  so. 

"  Well,"  she  said,  when  March  had  told  again  the 
little  there  was  to  tell,  "  I  suppose  it  must  be  a 
great  trial  to  a  woman  like  Mrs.  Horn  to  have  her 
niece  going  that  way." 

"  The  way  of  Chris  1 v  asked  March,  with  a 
smile. 

"  Oh,  Christ  came  into  the  world  to  teach  us  how 
to  live  rightly  in  it,  too.  If  we  were  all  to  spend 
12* 


274  A  HAZARD  OF  ls7E\V  FORTUNES. 

our  time  in  hospitals,  it  would  be  rather  dismal  for 
the  homes.  But  perhaps  you  don't  think  the  homes 
are  worth  minding  1 "  she  suggested,  with  a  certain 
note  in  her  voice  that  he  knew. 

He  got  up  and  kissed  her.  "I  think  the  gim- 
crackeries  are."  He  took  the  hat  he  had  set  down 
on  the  parlour  table  on  coming  in,  and  started  to  put 
it  in  the  hall,  and  that  made  her  notice  it. 

"  You  've  been  getting  a  new  hat ! " 

"  Yes,"  he  hesitated ;  "  the  old  one  had  got — was 
decidedly  shabby." 

"Well,  that's  right.  I  don't  like  you  to  wear 
them  too  long.  Did  you  leave  the  old  one  to  be 
pressed  ? " 

"  Well,  the  hatter  seemed  to  think  it  was  hardly 
worth  pressing,"  said  March.  He  decided  that  for 
the  present  his  wife's  nerves  had  quite  all  they 
could  bear. 


XII. 

IT  was  in  a  manner  grotesque,  but  to  March  it 
was  all  the  more  natural  for  that  reason,  that 
Dryfoos  should  have  Lindau's  funeral  from  hia 
house.  He  knew  the  old  man  to  be  darkly  groping, 
through  the  payment  of  these  vain  honours  to  the 
dead,  for  some  atonement  to  his  son,  and  he  imagined 
him  finding  in  them  such  comfort  as  comes  from 
doing  all  one  can,  even  when  all  is  useless. 

No  one  knew  what  Lindau's  religion  was,  and  in 
default  they  had  had  the  Anglican  burial  service 
read  over  him  ;  it  seems  the  refuge  of  all  the  home- 
less dead.  Mrs.  Dryfoos  came  down  for  the 
ceremony.  She  understood  that  it  was  for  Coonrod's 
sake  that  his  father  wished  the  funeral  to  be  there ; 
and  she  confided  to  Mrs.  March  that  she  believed 
Coonrod  would  have  been  pleased.  "  Coonrod  was 
a  member  of  the  'Piscopal  Church;  and  fawther's 
doin'  the  whole  thing  for  Coonrod  as  much  as  for 
anybody.  He  thought  the  world  of  Coonrod, 
fawther  did.  Mela,  she  kind  of  thought  it  would 
look  queer  to  have  two  funerals  from  the  same 
house,  hand-runnin',  as  you  might  call  it,  and  one  of 
'em  no  relation,  either;  but  when  she  saw  how 


276       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

fawther  was  bent  on  it,  she  give  in.  Seems  as  if 
she  was  tryin'  to  make  up  to  fawther  for  Coonrod  as 
much  as  she  could.  Mela  always  was  a  good  child, 
but  nobody  can  ever  come  up  to  Coonrod." 

March  felt  all  the  grotesqueness,  the  hopeless 
absurdity  of  Dryfoos's  endeavour  at  atonement  in 
these  vain  obsequies  to  the  man  for  whom  he  be 
lieved  his  son  to  have  died ;  but  the  effort  had  its 
magnanimity,  its  pathos,  and  there  was  a  poetry 
that  appealed  to  him  in  this  reconciliation  through 
death  of  men,  of  ideas,  of  conditions,  that  could  only 
have  gone  warring  on  in  life.  He  thought,  as  the 
priest  went  on  with  the  solemn  liturgy,  how  all  the 
world  must  come  together  in  that  peace  which, 
struggle  and  strive  as  we  may,  shall  claim  us  at  last. 
He  looked  at  Dryfoos,  and  wondered  whether  he 
would  consider  these  rites  a  sufficient  tribute,  or 
whether  there  was  enough  in  him  to  make  him 
realise  their  futility,  except  as  a  mere  sign  of  his 
wish  to  retrieve  the  past.  He  thought  how  we 
never  can  atone  for  the  wrong  we  do ;  the  heart  we 
have  grieved  and  .wounded  cannot  kindle  with  pity 
for  us  when  once  it  is  stilled ;  and  yet  we  can  put 
our  evil  from  us  with  penitence;  and  somehow, 
somewhere,  the  order  of  loving-kindness,  which  our 
passion  or  our  wilfulness  has  disturbed,  will  be 
restored. 

Dryfoos,  through  Fulkerson,  had  asked  all  the 
more  intimate  contributors  of  Every  Other  Week  to 
come.  Beaton  was  absent,  but  Fulkerson  had 
brought  Miss  Woodburn,  with  her  father,  and  Mrs. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  277" 

Leighton  and  Alma,  to  fill  up,  as  he  said.  Mela  was 
much  present,  and  was  official  with  the  arrangement 
of  the  flowers  and  the  welcome  of  the  guests.  She 
imparted  this  impersonality  to  her  reception  of 
Kendricks,  whom  Fulkerson  met  in  the  outer  hall 
with  his  party,  and  whom  he  presented  in  whisper 
to  them  all.  Kendricks  smiled  under  his  breath,  as- 
it  were,  and  was  then  mutely  and  seriously  polite  to 
the  Leightons.  Alma  brought  a  little  bunch  of 
flowers,  which  were  lost  in  the  presence  of  those 
which  Dryfoos  had  ordered  to  be  unsparingly 
provided. 

It  was  a  kind  of  satisfaction  to  Mela  to  have  Miss 
Vance  come,  and  reassuring  as  to  how  it  would  look 
to  have  the  funeral  there;  Miss  Vance  would 
certainly  not  have  come  unless  it  had  been  all  right  ^ 
she  had  come,  and  had  sent  some  Easter  lilies. 

"Ain't  Christine  coming  down?"  Fulkerson  asked 
Mela. 

"  No,  she  ain't  a  bit  well,  and  she  ain't  been,  ever 
since  Coonrod  died.  I  don't  know  what 's  got  over 
her,"  said  Mela.  She  added,  "Well,  I  should  V 
thought  Mr.  Beaton  would  'a'  made  out  to  'a'  come  ! " 

"Beaton's  peculiar,"  said  Fulkerson.  "If  he 
thinks  you  want  him  he  takes  a  pleasure  in  not 
letting  you  have  him." 

"  Well,  goodness  knows,  I  don't  want  him,"  said 
the  girl. 

Christine  kept  her  room,  and  for  the  most  part 
kept  her  bed ;  but  there  seemed  nothing  definitely 
matter  with  her,  and  she  would  not  let  them 


278        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

call  a  doctor.  Her  mother  said  she  reckoned  she 
was  beginning  to  feel  the  spring  weather,  that 
always  perfectly  pulled  a  body  down  in  New  York ; 
and  Mela  said  if  being  as  cross  as  two  sticks  was 
any  sign  of  spring-fever,  Christine  had  it  bad.  She 
was  faithfully  kind  to  her,  and  submitted  to  all  her 
humours,  but  she  recompensed  herself  by  the  freest 
criticism  of  Christine  when  not  in  actual  attendance 
on  her.  Christine  would  not  suffer  Mrs.  Mandel  to 
approach  her,  and  she  had  with  her  father  a  sullen 
submission  which  was  not  resignation.  For  her, 
apparently,  Conrad  had  not  died,  or  had  died  in 
vain. 

"  Pshaw ! "  said  Mela,  one  morning  when  she 
came  to  breakfast,  "  I  reckon  if  we  was  to  send  up 
an  old  card  of  Mr.  Beaton's  she  'd  rattle  downstairs 
fast  enough.  If  she's  sick,  she's  love-sick.  It 
makes  me  sick  to  see  her." 

Mela  was  talking  to  Mrs.  Mandel,  but  her  father 
looked  up  from  his  plate,  and  listened.  Mela  went 
on:  "/  don't  know  what's  made  the  fellow  quit 
comun'.  But  he  was  an  aggravatun'  thing,  and  no 
more  dependable  than  water.  It 's  just  like  Mr. 
Fulkerson  said,  if  he  thinks  you  want  him  he'll 
take  a  pleasure  in  not  lettun'  you  have  him.  I 
reckon  that 's  what 's  the  matter  with  Christine.  I 
believe  in  my  heart  the  girl  '11  die  if  she  don't  git 
him."  • 

Mela  went  on  to  eat  her  breakfast  with  her  own 
good  appetite.  She  now  always  came  down  to  keep 
her  father  company,  as  she  said,  and  she  did  her 


A  HAZARD  OP  NEW  FORTUNES.  279 

best  to  cheer  and  comfort  him.  At  least  she  kept 
the  talk  going,  and  she  had  it  nearly  all  to  herself, 
for  Mrs  Mandel  was  now  merely  staying  on  pro- 
visionally, and  in  the  absence  of  any  regrets  or 
excuses  from  Christine,  was  looking  ruefully  for- 
ward to  the  moment  when  she  must  leave  even  this 
ungentle  home  for  the  chances  of  the  ruder  world 
outside. 

The  old  man  said  nothing  at  table,  but  when 
.Mela  went  up  to  see  if  she  could  do  anything  for 
Christine,  he  asked  Mrs.  Mandel  again  about  all  the 
facts  of  her  last  interview  with  Beaton. 

She  gave  them  as  fully  as  she  could  remember 
them,  and  the  old  man  made  no  comment  on  them. 
But  he  went  out  directly  after,  and  at  Every  Other 
Week  office  he  climbed  the  stairs  to  Fulkerson's 
room,  and  asked  for  Beaton's  address.  No  one  yet 
had  taken  charge  of  Conrad's  work,  and  Fulkerson 
was  running  the  thing  himself,  as  he  said,  till  he 
could  talk  with  Dryfoos  about  it.  The  old  man 
would  not  look  into  the  empty  room  where  he  had 
last  seen  his  son  alive;  he  turned  his  face  away,  and 
hurried  by  the  door. 


xm. 

THE  course  of  public  events  carried  Beaton's 
private  affairs  beyond  the  reach  of  his  simple  first 
intention  to  renounce  his  connection  with  Every 
Qther  Week.  In  fact  this  was  not  perhaps  so  simple 
as  it  seemed,  and  long  before  it  could  be  put  in 
•effect  it  appeared  still  simpler  to  do  nothing  about 
the  matter :  to  remain  passive  and  leave  the  initiative 
to  Dryfoos,  to  maintain  the  dignity  of  unconscious- 
ness and  let  recognition  of  any  change  in  the 
situation  come  from  those  who  had  caused  the 
change.  After  all,  it  was  rather  absurd  to  propose 
making  a  purely  personal  question  the  pivot  on 
which  his  relations  with  Every  Other  Week  turned. 
He  took  a  hint  from  March's  position  and  decided 
that  he  did  not  know  Dryfoos  in  these  relations ;  he 
only  knew  Fulkerson,  who  had  certainly  had  nothing 
to  do  with  Mrs.  Handel's  asking  his  intentions.  As 
he  reflected  upon  this  he  became  less  eager  to  look 
Fulkerson  up  and  make  the  magazine  a  partner  of 
his  own  sufferings.  This  was  the  soberer  mood  to 
which  Beaton  trusted  that  night  even  before  he 
slept,  and  he  awoke  fully  confirmed  in  it.  As  he 
examined  the  offence  done  him  in  the  cold  light  of 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       281 

day,  he  perceived  that  it  had  not  come  either  from 
Mrs.  Mandel,  who  was  visibly  the  faltering  and 
unwilling  instrument  of  it,  or  from  Christine,  who 
was  altogether  ignorant  of  it,  but  from  Dryfoos, 
whom  he  could  not  hurt  by  giving  up  his  place.  He 
could  only  punish  Fulkerson  by  that,  and  Fulkerson 
was  innocent.  Justice  and  interest  alike  dictated 
the  passive  course  to  which  Beaton  inclined ;  and  he 
reflected  that  he  might  safely  leave  the  punishment 
of  Dryfoos  to  Christine,  who  would  find  out  what 
had  happened,  and  would  be  able  to  take  care  of 
herself  in  any  encounter  of  tempers  with  her  father. 
Beaton  did  not  go  to  the  office  during  the  week 
that  followed  upon  this  conclusion;  but  they  were 
used  there  to  these  sudden  absences  of  his,  and  as 
his  work  for  the  time  was  in  train,  nothing  was 
made  of  his  staying  away,  except  the  sarcastic  com- 
ment which  the  thought  of  him  was  apt  to  excite  in 
the  literary  department.  He  no  longer  came  so 
much  to  the  Leightons,  and  Fulkerson  was  in  no 
state  of  mind  to  miss  any  one  there  except  Miss 
Woodburn,  whom  he  never  missed.  Beaton  was 
left,  then,  unmolestedly  awaiting  the  course  of 
destiny,  when  he  read  in  the  morning  paper,  over 
his  coffee  at  Maroni's,  the  deeply  scare-headed  story 
of  Conrad's  death  and  the  clubbing  of  Lindau.  He 
probably  cared  as  little  for  either  of  them  as  any 
man  that  ever  saw  them ;  but  he  felt  a  shock  if  not 
a  pang  at  Conrad's  fate,  so  out  of  keeping  with  his 
life  and  character.  He  did  not  know  what  to  do ; 
and  he  did  nothing.  He  was  not  asked  to  the 


282  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES, 

funeral,  but  he  had  .not  expected  that,  and  when 
Fulkerson  brought  him  notice  that  Lindau  was  also 
to  be  buried  from  Dryfoos's  house,  it  was  without 

]    his  usual  sullen  vindictiveness  that  he  kept  away. 

-  In  his  sort,  and  as  much  as  a  man  could  who  was 
necessarily  so  much  taken  up  with  himself,  he  was 
sorry  for  Conrad's  father;  Beaton  had  a  peculiar 
tenderness  for  his  own  father,  and  he  imagined  how 
his  father  would  feel  if  it  were  he  who  had  been 
killed  in  Conrad's  place,  as  it  might  very  well  have 
been ;  he  sympathised  with  himself  in  view  of  the 
possibility ;  and  for  once  they  were  mistaken  who 
thought  him  indifferent  and  merely  brutal  in  his 
failure  to  appear  at  Lindau's  obsequies. 

He  would  really  have  gone  if  he  had  known  how- 
to  reconcile  his  presence  in  that  house  with  the 
terms  of  his  effective  banishment  from  it;  and  he 
was  rather  forgivingly  finding  himself  wronged  in 
the  situation,  when  Dryfoos  knocked  at  the  studio 
door  the  morning  after  Lindau's  funeral.  Beaton 
roared  out  "Come  in  !"  as  he  always  did  to  a  knock 
if  he  had  not  a  model :  if  he  had  a  model  he  set  the 
door  slightly  ajar,  and  with  his  palette  on  his  thumb 
frowned  at  his  visitor,  and  told  him  he  could  not 
.come  in.  Dryfoos  fumbled  about  for  the  knob  in 
the  dim  passageway  outside,  and  Beaton,  who  had 
experience  of  people's  difficulties  with  it,  suddenly 
jerked  the  door  open.  The  two  men  stood  con- 
,  fronted,  and  at  first  sight  of  each  other  their 
quiescent  dislike  revived.  Each  would  have  been 
willing  to  turn  away  from  the  other,  but  that 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  283 

was  not  possible.  Beaton  snorted  some  sort  of 
inarticulate  salutation,  which  Dryfoos  did  not  try  to 
return ;  he  asked  if  he  could,  see  him  alone  for  a 
minute  or  two,  and  Beaton  bade  him  come  in,  and 
swept  some  paint-blotched  rags  from  the  chair  which 
he  told  him  to  take.  He  noticed,  as  the  old  man 
sank  tremulously  into  it,  that  his  movement  was 
like  that  of  his  own  father,  and  also  that  he  looked 
very  much  like  Christine.  Dryfoos  folded  his  hands 
tremulously  on  the  top  of  his  horn-handled  stick,  and 
he  was  rather  finely  haggard,  with  the  dark  hollows 
round  his  black  eyes,  and  the  fall  of  the  muscles  on 
either  side  of  his  chin.  He  had  forgotten  to  take 
his  soft,  wide-brimmed  hat  off;  and  Beaton  felt  a 
desire  to  sketch  him  just  as  he  sat. 

Dryfoos  suddenly  pulled  himself  together  from 
the  dreary  absence  into  which  he  fell  at  first. 
"  Young  man,"  he  began,  "  may  be  I  Ve  come  here 
on  a  fool's  errand,"  and  Beaton  rather  fancied  that 
beginning. 

But  it  embarrassed  him  a  little,  and  he  said,  with 
a  shy  glance  aside,  "I  don't  know  what  you  mean." 

"  I  reckon,"  Dryfoos  answered  quietly,  "you  got 
your  notion,  though.  I  set  that  woman  on  to  speak 
to  you  the  way  she  done.  But  if  there  was  anything 
wrong  in  the  way  she  spoke ;  or  if  you  didn't  feel 
like  she  had  any  right  to  question  you  up  as  if  we 
suspected  you  of  anything  mean,  I  want  you  to  say 
so." 

Beaton  said  nothing  and  the  old  man  went  on. 

"  I  ain't  very  well  up  in  the  ways  of  the  world, 


284  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

and  I  don't  pretend  to  be.  All  I  want  is  to  be  fair 
and  square  with  everybody.  I've  made  mistakes, 

though,  in  my  time "  He  stopped,  and  Beaton 

was  not  proof  against  the  misery  of  his  face,  which 
was  twisted  as  with  some  strong  physical  ache.  "  I 
don't  know  as  I  want  to  make  any  more,  if  I  can 
help  it.  I  don't  know  but  what  you  had  a  right  to 
keep  on  comin',  and  if  you  had  I  want  you  to  say  so. 
Don't  you  be  afraid  but  what  I'll  take  it  in  the 
right  way.  I  don't  want  to  take  advantage  of  any- 
body; and  I  don't  ask  you  to  say  any  more  than  that." 

Beaton  did  not  find  the  humiliation  of  the  man 
who  had  humiliated  him  so  sweet  as  he  could  have 
fancied  it  might  be.  He  knew  how  it  had  come 
about,  and  that  it  was  an  effect  of  love  for  his  child ; 
it  did  not  matter  by  what  ungracious  means  she  had 
brought  him  to  know  that  he  loved  her  better  than 
his  own  will,  that  his  wish  for  her  happiness  was 
stronger  than  his  pride ;  it  was  enough  that  he  was 
now  somehow  brought  to  give  proof  of  it.  Beaton 
could  not  be  aware  of  all  that  dark  coil  of  circum- 
stance through  which  Dryfoos's  present  action 
evolved  itself ;  the  worst  of  this  was  buried  in  the 
secret  of  the  old  man's  heart,  a  worm  of  perpetual 
torment.  What  was  apparent  to  another  was  that 
he  was  broken  by  the  sorrow  that  had  fallen  upon 
him,  and  it  was  this  that  Beaton  respected  and  pitied 
in  his  impulse  to  be  frank  and  kind  in  his  answer. 

"  No,  I  had  no  right  to  keep  coming  to  your  house 
in  the  way  I  did,  unless — unless  I  meant  more  than 
I  ever  said."  Beaton  added,  "  I  don't  say  that  what 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  285 

you  did  was  usual — in  this  country,  at  any  rate ;  but 
I  can't  say  you  were  wrong.  Since  you  speak  to  me 
about  the  matter,  it 's  only  fair  to  myself  to  say  that 
a  good  deal  goes  on  in  life  without  much  thinking 
of  consequences.  That 's  the  way  I  excuse  myself." 

"  And  you  say  Mrs.  Mandel  done  right  ? "  asked 
Dryfoos,  as  if  he  wished  simply  to  be  assured  of  a 
point  of  etiquette. 

"Yes,  she  did  right.  I've  nothing  to  complain 
of." 

"  That 's  all  I  wanted  to  know,"  said  Dryfoos ;  but 
apparently  he  had  not  finished,  and  he  did  not  go, 
though  the  silence  that  Beaton  now  kept  gave  him 
a  chance  to  do  so.  He  began  a  series  of  questions 
which  had  no  relation  to  the  matter  in  hand,  though 
they  were  strictly  personal  to  Beaton.  "  What 
countryman  are  you  1 "  he  asked,  after  a  moment. 

"  What  countryman  ? "  Beaton  frowned  back  at 
him. 

"  Yes,  are  you  an  American  by  birth  ? " 

"  Yes ;  I  was  born  in  Syracuse." 

"  Protestant  1 " 

"My  father  is  a  Scotch  Seceder." 

"  What  business  is  your  father  in  ? " 

Beaton  faltered  and  blushed ;  then  he  answered, 
"  He 's  in  the  monument  business,  as  he  calls  it. 
He's  a  tombstone  cutter."  Now  that  he  was 
launched,  Beaton  saw  no  reason  for  not  declaring, 
"  My  father 's  always  been  a  poor  man,  and  worked 
with  his  own  hands  for  his  living."  He  had  too 
slight  esteem  socially  for  Dryfoos  to  conceal  a  fact 


286  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

from  him  that  he  might  have  wished  to  blink  with 
others. 

"Well,  that's  right,"  said  Dryfoos.  "I  used  to 
farm  it  myself.  I've  got  a  good  pile  of  money 
together,  now.  At  first  it  didn't  come  easy ;  but 
now  it 's  got  started  it  pours  in  and  pours  in ;  it 
seems  like  there  was  no  end  to  it.  I  Ve  got  well  on 
to  three  million  ;  but  it  couldn't  keep  me  from  losin* 
my  son.  It  can't  buy  me  back  a  minute  of  his  life ; 
not  all  the  money  in  the  world  can  do  it ! " 

He  grieved  this  out  as  if  to  himself  rather  than  to 
Beaton,  who  scarcely  ventured  to  say,  "  I  know — I 
am  very  sorry " 

"How  did  you  come,"  Dryfoos  interrupted,  "to 
take  up  paintin'  1 " 

"  Well,  I  don't  know,"  said  Beaton,  a  little  scorn- 
fully. "  You  don't  take  a  thing  of  that  kind  up,  I 
fancy.  I  always  wanted  to  paint." 

"  Father  try  to  stop  you  ? " 

"No.  It  wouldn't  have  been  of  any  use. 
Why " 

"  My  son,  he  wanted  to  be  a  preacher,  and  I  did 
stop  him — or  I  thought  I  did.  But  I  reckon  he  was 
a  preacher,  all  the  same,  every  minute  of  his  life. 
As  you  say,  it  ain't  any  use  to  try  to  stop  a  thing 
like  that.  I  reckon  if  a  child  has  got  any  particular 
bent,  it  was  given  to  it ;  and  it 's  goin'  against  the 
grain,  it's  goin'  against  the  law,  to  try  to  bend  it 
some  other  way.  There 's  lots  of  good  business  men 
Mr.  Beaton,  twenty  of  'em  to  every  good  preacher  ?" 

"I   imagine   more    than    twenty,"   said   Beaton, 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES,       287 

amused  and  touched  through  his  curiosity  as  to 
what  the  old  man  was  driving  at  by  the  quaint  sim- 
plicity of  his  speculations.  - 

"  Father  ever  come  to  the  city  ? " 

"  No ;  he  never  has  the  time ;  and  my  mother 's 
a.n  invalid." 

"  Oh  !     Brothers  and  sisters  1 " 

"  Yes  ;  we  're  a  large  family." 

"  I  lost  two  little  fellers — twins,"  said  Dryfoos 
sadly.  "  But  we  hain't  ever  had  but  just  the  five. 
Ever  take  portraits  ? " 

"Yes,"  said  Beaton,  meeting  this  zigzag  in  the 
queries  as  seriously  as  the  rest.  "  I  don't  think  I 
am  good  at  it." 

Dryfoos  got  to  his  feet.  "  I  wished  you  'd  paint 
a  likeness  of  my  son.  You've  seen  him  plenty  of 
times.  We  won't  fight  about  the  price,  don't  you 
be  afraid  of  that." 

Beaton  was  astonished,  and  in  a  mistaken  way  he 
was  disgusted.  He  saw  that  Dryfoos  was  trying  to 
undo  Mrs.  Mandel's  work  practically,  and  get  him 
to  come  again  to  his  house  ;  that  he  now  conceived 
of  the  offence  given  him  as  condoned,  and  wished  to 
restore  the  former  situation.  He  knew  that  he  was 
attempting  this  for  Christine's  sake,  but  he  was  not 
the  man  to  imagine  that  Dryfoos  was  trying  not 
only  to  tolerate  him  but  to  like  him ;  and  in  fact 
Dryfoos  was  not  wholly  conscious  himself  of  this 
end.  What  they  both  understood  was  that  Dryfoos 
was  endeavouring  to  get  at  Beaton  through  Conrad's 
memory ;  but  with  one  this  was  its  dedication  to  a 


288  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

purpose  of  self-sacrifice  and  with  the  other  a  vulgai 
and  shameless  use  of  it. 

"I  couldn't  do  it,"  said  Beaton.  "I  couldn't 
think  of  attempting  it." 

"  Why  not  ? "  Dryfoos  persisted.  "  We  got  some 
photographs  of  him ;  he  didn't  like  to  sit  very  well ; 
but  his  mother  got  him  to ;  and  you  know  how  he 
looked." 

"  I  couldn't  do  it — I  couldn't.  I  can't  even  con- 
sider it.  I  'm  very  sorry.  I  would,  if  it  were 
possible.  But  it  isn't  possible." 

"  I  reckon  if  you  see  the  photographs  once " 

"  It  isn't  that,  Mr.  Dryfoos.  But  I  'm  not  in  the 
way  of  that  kind  of  thing  any  more." 

"  I  'd  give  any  price  you  've  a  mind  to  name " 

"  Oh,  it  isn't  the  money ! "  cried  Beaton,  beginning 
to  lose  control  of  himself. 

The  old  man  did  not  notice  him.  He  sat  with 
his  head  fallen  forward,  and  his  chin  resting  on  his 
folded  hands.  Thinking  of  the  portrait,  he  saw 
Conrad's  face  before  him,  reproachful,  astonished, 
but  all  gentle  as  it  looked  when  Conrad  caught  his 
hand  that  day  after  he  struck  him ;  he  heard  him 
say,  "  Father  !  "  and  the  sweat  gathered  on  his  fore- 
head. "  0  my  God  !  "  he  groaned.  "  No  ;  there 
ain't  anything  I  can  do  now." 

Beaton  did  not  know  whether  Dryfoos  was  speak- 
ing to  him  or  not.  He  started  toward  him  :  "  Are 
you  ill?" 

"  No,  there  ain't  anything  the  matter,"  said  the 
old  man.  "  But  I  guess  1 11  lay  down  on  your  settee 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  289 

a  minute."  He  tottered  with  Beaton's  help  to  the 
aesthetic  couch  covered  with  a  tiger-skin,  on  which 
Beaton  had  once  thought  of  painting  a  Cleopatra ; 
but  he  could  never  get  the  right  model.  As  the  old 
man  stretched  himself  out  on  it,  pale  and  suffering, 
he  did  not  look  much  like  a  Cleopatra,  but  Beaton 
was  struck  with  his  effectiveness,  and  the  likeness 
between  him  and  his  daughter ;  she  would  make  a 
very  good  Cleopatra  in  some  ways.  All  the  time, 
while  these  thoughts  passed  through  his  mind,  he 
was  afraid  Dryfoos  would  die.  The  old  man  fetched 
his  breath  in  gasps,  which  presently  smoothed  and 
lengthened  into  his  normal  breathing.  Beaton  got 
him  a  glass  of  wine,  and  after  tasting  it  he  sat 
up. 

"  You  Ve  got  to  excuse  me,"  he  said,  getting  back 
to  his  characteristic  grimness  with  surprising  sudden- 
ness, when  once  he  began  to  recover  himself.  "  I  Ve 
been  through  a  good  deal  lately ;  and  sometimes  it 
ketches  me  round  the  heart  like  a  pain." 

In  his  life  of  selfish  immunity  from  grief  Beaton 
could  not  understand  this  experience  that  poignant 
sorrow  brings ;  he  said  to  himself  that  Dryfoos  was 
going  the  way  of  angina pectoris ;  as  he  began  shuffling 
off  the  tiger-skin  he  said,  '  Had  you  better  get  up  ? 
Wouldn't  you  like  me  to  call  a  doctor  ? " 

"  I  'm  all  right,  young  man."  Dryfoos  took  his 
hat  and  stick  from  him,  but  he  made  for  the  door 
so  uncertainly  that  Beaton  put  his  hand  under  his 
elbow  and  helped  him  out,  and  down  the  stairs,  to 
his  coupe\ 

VOL.  II— 13 


290  A  HAZARf)  OF  NEW  FORTUNES; 

"  Hadn't  you  Better  let  me  drive  home  with  you  ? n 
he  asked. 

"  What  ? "  said  Dryfoos  suspiciously. 

Beaton  repeated  his  question. 

-"  I  guess  I  'm  able  to  go  home  alone,"  said  Dryfoos, 
in  a  surly  tone,  and  he  put  his  head  out  of  the 
window  and  called  up  "  Home ! "  to  the  driver, 
who  immediately  started  off,  and  left  Beaton  stand- 
ing beside  the  curb-stone. 


XIV. 

BEATON  wasted  the  rest  of  the  day  in  the 
emotions  and  speculations  which  Dryfoos's  call  in- 
spired. It  was  not  that  they  continuously  occupied 
him,  but  they  broke  up  the  train  of  other  thoughts, 
and  spoiled  him  for  work;  a  very  little  spoiled 
Beaton  for  work;  he  required  just  the  right  mood 
for  work.  He  comprehended  perfectly  well  that 
Dryfoos  had  made  him  that  extraordinary  embassy 
because  he  wished  him  to  renew  his  visits,  and  he 
easily  imagined  the  means  that  had  brought  him  to 
this  pass.  From  what  he  knew  of  that  girl  he  did 
not  envy  her  father  his  meeting  with  her  when  he 
must  tell  her  his  mission  had  failed.  But  had  it 
failed  ?  When  Beaton  came  to  ask  himself  this 
question,  he  could  only  perceive  that  he  and  Dry- 
foos had  failed  to  find  any  ground  of  sympathy,  and 
had  parted  in  the  same  dislike  with  which  they  had 
met.  But  as  to  any  other  failure,  it  was  certainly 
tacit,  and  it  still  rested  with  him  to  give  it  effect. 
He  could  go  back  to  Dryfoos's  house,  as  freely  as 
before,  and  it  was  clear  that  he  was  very  much  de- 
sired to  come  back.  But  if  he  went  back  it  was  also 
clear  that  he  must  go  back  with  intentions  more 


292       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

explicit  than  before,  and  now  he  had  to  ask  himself 
just  how  much  or  how  little  he  had  meant  by  going 
there.  His  liking  for  Christine  had  certainly  not 
increased,  but  the  charm,  on  the  other  hand,  of 
holding  a  leopardess  in  leash  had  not  yet  palled 
upon  him.  In  his  life  of  inconstancies,  it  was 
a  pleasure  to  rest  upon  something  fixed,  and  the 
man  who  had  no  control  over  himself  liked  logically 
enough  to  feel  his  control  of  some  one  else.  The 
fact  cannot  otherwise  be  put  in  terms,  and  the 
attraction  which  Christine  Dryfoos  had  for  him, 
apart  from  this,  escapes  from  all  terms,  as  anything 
purely  and  merely  passional  must.  He  had  seen 
from  the  first  that  she  was  a  cat,  and  so  far  as  youth 
forecasts  such  things,  he  felt  that  she  would  be  a 
shrew.  But  he  had  a  perverse  sense  of  her  beauty, 
and  he  knew  a  sort  of  life  in  which  her  power  to 
molest  him  with  her  temper  could  be  reduced  to  the 
smallest  proportions,  and  even  broken  to  pieces. 
Then  the  consciousness  of  her  money  entered. 
It  was  evident  that  the  old  man  had  mentioned 
his  millions  in  the  way  of  a  hint  to  him  of  what 
he  might  reasonably  expect  if  he  would  turn  and 
be  his  son-in-law.  Beaton  did  not  put  it  to  him- 
self in  those  words;  and  in  fact  his  cogitations  were 
not  in  words  at  all.  It  was  the  play  of  cognitions, 
of  sensations,  formlessly  tending  to  the  effect  which 
can  only  be  very  clumsily  interpreted  in  language. 
But  when  he  got  to  this  point  in  them,  Beaton 
rose  to  magnanimity  a.nd  in  a  flash  of  dramatic 
reverie  disposed  of  a  part  of  Dryfoos's  riches  in 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  293 

placing  his  father  and  mother,  and  his  brothers  and 
sisters,  beyond  all  pecuniary  anxiety  for  ever.  He 
had  no  shame,  no  scruple  in  this,  for  he  had  been 
a  pensioner  upon  others  ever  since  a  Syracusan 
amateur  of  the  arts  had  detected  his  talent,  and 
given  him  th,e  money  to  go  and  study  abroad. 
Beaton  had  always  considered  the  money  a  loan,  to 
be  repaid  out  of  his  future  success ;  but  he  now 
never  dreamt  of  repaying  it ;  as  the  man  was  rich, 
he  had  even  a  contempt  for  the  notion  of  repaying 
him ;  but  this  did  not  prevent  him  from  feeling  very 
keenly  the  hardships  he  put  his  father  to  in  borrow- 
ing money  from  him,  though  he  never  repaid  his 
father,  either.  In  this  reverie  he  saw  himself  sacri- 
ficed in  marriage  with  Christine  Dryfoos,  in  a  kind 
of  admiring  self-pity,  and  he  was  melted  by  the 
spectacle  of  the  dignity  with  which  he  suffered  all 
the  life-long  trials  ensuing  from  his  unselfishness. 
The  fancy  that  Alma  Leighton  came  bitterly  to 
regret  him,  contributed  to  soothe  and  natter  him, 
and  he  was  not  sure  that  Margaret  Vance  did  not 
suffer  a  like  loss  in  him. 

There  had  been  times  when,  as  he  believed,  that" 
beautiful  girl's  high  thoughts  had  tended  toward 
him ;  there  had  been  looks,  gestures,  even  words, 
that  had  this  effect  to  him,  or  that  seemed  to  have 
had  it ;  and  Beaton  saw  that  he  might  easily  construe 
Mrs.  Horn's  confidential  appeal  to  him  to  get  Mar- 
garet interested  in  art  again  as  something  by  no 
means  necessarily  offensive,  even  though  it  had  been 
made  to  him  as  to  a  master  of  illusion.  If  Mrs. 


294       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

Horn  had  to  choose  between  him  and  the  life  of 
good  works  to  which  her  niece  was  visibly  abandon- 
ing herself,  Beaton  could  not  doubt  which  she  would 
choose ;  the  only  question  was  how  real  the  danger 
of  a  life  of  good  works  was. 

As  he  thought  of  these  two  girls,  one  so  charm- 
ing and  the  other  so  divine,  it  became  indefinitely 
difficult  to  renounce  them  for  Christine  Dryfoos, 
with  her  sultry  temper,  and  her  earthbound  ideals. 
Life  had  been  so  flattering  to  Beaton  hitherto  that 
he  could  not  believe  them  both  finally  indifferent ; 
and  if  they  were  not  indifferent,  perhaps  he  did  not 
wish  either  of  them  to  be  very  definite.  What  he 
really  longed  for  was  their  sympathy ;  for  a  man 
who  is  able  to  walk  round  quite  ruthlessly  on  the 
feelings  of  others  often  has  very  tender  feelings  of 
his  own,  easily  lacerated,  and  eagerly  responsive  to 
the  caresses  of  compassion.  In  this  frame  Beaton 
determined  to  go  that  afternoon,  though  it  was  not 
Mrs.  Horn's  day,  and  call  upon  her  in  the  hope  of 
possibly  seeing  Miss  Vance  alone.  As  he  continued 
in  it,  he  took  this  for  a  sign,  and  actually  went.  It 
did  not  fall  out  at  once  as  he  wished,  but  he  got 
Mrs.  Horn  to  talking  again  about  her  niece,  and  Mrs. 
Horn  again  regretted  that  nothing  could  be  done  by 
the  fine  arts  to  reclaim  Margaret  from  good  works. 

"  Is  she  at  home  ?  Will  you  let  me  see  her  1 " 
asked  Beaton  with  something  of  the  scientific 
interest  of  a  physician  inquiring  for  a  patient  whose 
symptoms  have  been  rehearsed  to  him.  He  had  not 
asked  for  her  before. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       295 

"  Yes,  certainly,"  said  Mrs.  Horn,  and  she  went 
herself  to  call  Margaret,  and  she  did  not  return  with 
her.  The  girl  entered  with  the  gentle  grace  peculiar 
to  her ;  and  Beaton,  bent  as  he  was  on  his  own 
consolation,  could  not  help  being  struck  with  the 
spiritual  exaltation  of  her  look.  At  sight  of  her, 
the  vague  hope  he  had  never  quite  relinquished, 
that  they  might  be  something  more  than  aesthetic 
friends,  died  in  his  heart.  She  wore  black,  as  she 
often  did ;  but  in  spite  of  its  fashion  her  dress 
received  a  nun-like  effect  from  the  pensive  absence 
of  her  face.  "  Decidedly,"  thought  Beaton,  "  she  is 
far  gone  in  good  works." 

But  he  rose,  all  the  same,  to  meet  her  on  the  old 
level,  and  he  began  at  once  to  talk  to  her  of  the 
subject  he  had  been  discussing  with  her  aunt.  He 
said  frankly  that  they  both  felt  she  had  unjustifiably 
turned  her  back  upon  possibilities  which  she  ought 
not  to  neglect. 

"  You  know  very  well,"  she  answered,  "  that  I 
couldn't  do  anything  in  that  way  worth  the  time 
I  should  waste  on  it.  Don't  talk  of  it,  please.  I 
suppose  my  aunt  has  been  asking  you  to  say  this, 
but  it 's  no  use.  I  'm  sorry  it 's  no  use,  she  wishes 
it  so  much ;  but  I  'm  not  sorry  otherwise.  You  can 
find  the  pleasure  at  least  of  doing  good  work  in  it ; 
but  I  couldn't  find  anything  in  it  but  a  barren 
amusement.  Mr.  Wetmore  is  right ;  for  me,  it 's 
like  enjoying  an  opera,  or  a  ball." 

"  That 's  one  of  Wetmore's  phrases.  He  'd  sacrifice 
anything  to  them." 


296       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

She  put  aside  the  whole  subject  with  a  look. 
"  You  were  not  at  Mr.  Dryfoos's  the  other  day. 
Have  you  seen  them,  any  of  them,  lately  ? " 

"  I  haven't  been  there  for  some  time,  no,"  &aid 
Beaton  evasively.  But  he  thought  if  he  was  to  get 
on  to  anything,  he  had  better  be  candid.  "  Mr. 
Dryfoos  was  at  my  studio  this  morning.  He 's  got 
a  queer  notion.  He  wants  me  to  paint  his  son's 
portrait." 

She  started.     "  And  will  you " 

"  No,  I  couldn't  do  such  a  thing.  It  isn't  in  my 
way.  I  told  him  so.  His  son  had  a  beautiful  face 
— an  antique  profile ;  a  sort  of  early  Christian  type  ; 
but  I  'm  too  much  of  a  pagan  for  that  sort  of  thing." 

"Yes." 

"Yes,"  Beaton  continued,  not  quite  liking  her 
assent,  after  he  had  invited  it  He  had  his  pride  in 
being  a  pagan,  a  Greek,  but  it  failed  him  in  her 
presence,  now;  and  he  wished  that  she  had  pro- 
tested he  was  none.  "  He  was  a  singular  creature ; 
a  kind  of  survival ;  an  exile  in  our  time  and  place. 
I  don't  know :  we  don't  quite  expect  a  saint  to  be 
rustic;  but  with  all  his  goodness  Conrad  Dryfoos 
was  a  country  person.  If  he  were  not  dying  for  a 
cause  you  could  imagine  him  milking."  Beaton 
intended  a  contempt  that  came  from  the  bitterness 
of  having  himself  once  milked  the  family  cow. 

His  contempt  did  not  reach  Miss  Vance.  "  He 
died  for  a  cause,"  she  said.  "  The  holiest." 

"Of  labour  1" 

"Of  peace.  He  was  there  to  persuade  the 
strikers  to  be  quiet  and  go  home." 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       297 

"  I  haven't  been  quite  sure,"  said  Beaton.  "  But 
in  any  case  he  had  no  business  there.  The  police 
were  on  hand  to  do  the  persuading." 

"  I  can't  let  you  talk  so  !  "  cried  the  girl.  "  It 's 
shocking !  Oh,  I  know  it 's  the  way  people  talk, 
and  the  worst  is  that  in  the  sight  of  the  world  it 's 
the  right  way.  But  the  blessing  on  the  peace- 
makers is  not  for  the  policemen  with  their  clubs." 

Beaton  saw  that  she  was  nervous ;  he  made  his 
reflection  that  she  was  altogether  too  far  gone  in 
good  works  for  the  fine  arts  to  reach  her ;  he  began 
to  think  how  he  could  turn  her  primitive  Christi- 
anity to  the  account  •  of  his  modern  heathenism. 
He  had  no  deeper  design  than  to  get  flattered  back 
into  his  own  favour  far  enough  to  find  courage  for 
some  sort  of  decisive  step.  In  his  heart  he  was  try- 
ing to  will  whether  he  should  or  should  not  go  back 
to  Dryfoos's  house.  It  could  not  be  from  the  caprice 
that  had  formerly  taken  him;  it  must  be  from  a 
definite  purpose;  again  he  realised  this.  "Of 
course ;  you  are  right,"  he  said.  "  I  wish  I  could 
have  answered  that  old  man  differently.  I  fancy  he 
was  bound  up  in  his  son,  though  he  quarrelled  with 
him,  and  crossed  him.  But  I  couldn't  do  it;  it 
wasn't  possible."  He  said  to  himself  that  if  she 
said,  "No,"  now,  he  would  be  ruled  by  her  agree- 
ment with  him ;  and  if  she  disagreed  with  him,  he 
would  be  ruled  still  by  the  chance,  and  would  go  no 
more  to  the  Dryfoos's.  He  found  himself  em- 
barrassed to  the  point  of  blushing  when  she  said 
nothing,  and  left  him,  as  it  were,  on  his  own  hands. 
"I  should  like  to  have  given  him  that  comfort;  I 
13* 


298       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

fancy  he  hasn't  much  comfort  in  life ;  but  there 
seems  no  comfort  in  me."  He  dropped  his  head  in 
a  fit  attitude  for  compassion ;  but  she  poured  no 
pity  upon  it. 

"There  is  no  comfort -for  us  in  ourselves,"  she 
said.  "  It 's  hard  to  get  outside  ;  but  there 's  only 
despair  within.  When  we  think  we  have  done 
something  for  others,  by  some  great  effort,  we  find 
it's  all  for  our  own  vanity." 

"Yes,"  said  Beaton.  "If  I  could  paint  pictures 
for  righteousness'  sake,  I  should  have  been  glad  to 
do  Conrad  Dryfoos  for  his  father.  I  felt  sorry  for 
him.  Did  the  rest  seem  very  much  broken  up  ? 
You  saw  them  all  ? " 

"Not  all.  Miss  Dryfoos  was  ill,  her  sister  said. 
It's  hard  to  tell  how  much  people  suffer.  His 
mother  seemed  bewildered.  The  younger  sister  is 
a  simple  creature ;  she  looks  like  him ;  I  think  she 
must  have  something  of  his  spirit." 

"Not  much  spirit  of  any  kind,  I  imagine,"  said 
Beaton.  "  But  she 's  amiably  material.  Did  they 
say  Miss  Dryfoos  was  seriously  ill  1 " 

"  No.  I  supposed  she  might  be  prostrated  by  her 
brother's  death." 

"Does  she  seem  that  kind  of  person  to  you,  Miss 
Vance  1  "  asked  Beaton. 

"  I  don't  know.  I  haven't  tried  to  see  so  much 
of  them  as  I  might,  the  past  winter.  I  was  not 
sure  about  her  when  I  met  her ;  I  've  never  seen 
much  of  people,  except  in  my  own  set,  and  the— 
very  poor.  I  have  been  afraid  I  didn't  understand 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       299 

her.  She  may  have  a  kind  of  pride  that  would  not 
let  her  do  herself  justice." 

Beaton  felt  the  unconscious  dislike  in  the  endea- 
vour of  praise.  "  Then  she  seems  to  you  like  a 
person  whose  life — its  trials,  its  chances — would 
make  more  of  than  she  is  now  1 " 

"I  didn't  say  that.  I  can't  judge  of  her  at  all; 
but  where  we  don't  know,  don't  you  think  we  ought 
to  imagine  the  best  ? " 

"Oh  yes,"  said  Beaton.  "I  didn't  know  but 
what  I  once  said  of  them  might  have  prejudiced 
you  against  them.  I  have  accused  myself  of  it." 
He  always  took  a  tone  of  conscientiousness,  of  self- 
censure,  in  talking  with  Miss  Vance ;  he  could  not 
help  it. 

"Oh  no.  And  I  never  allowed  myself  to  form 
any  judgment  of  her.  She  is  very  pretty,  don't 
you  think,  in  a  kind  of  way  1  " 

"  Very." 

"  She  has  a  beautiful  brunette  colouring :  that 
floury  white  and  the  delicate  pink  in  it.  Her 
eyes  are  beautiful." 

"  She  's  graceful,  too,"  said  Beaton.  '  I  Ve  tried 
her  in  colour;  but  I  didn't  make  it  out." 

"  I  've  wondered  sometimes,"  said  Miss  Vance, 
"  whether  that  elusive  quality  you  find  in  some 
people  you  try  to  paint  doesn't  characterise  them 
all  through.  Miss  Dryfoos  might  be  ever  so  much 
finer  and  better  than  we  would  find  out  in  the 
society  way  that  seems  the  only  way." 

"  Perhaps,"  said  Beaton  gloomily ;  and  he  went 


300        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

away  profoundly  discouraged  by  this  last  analysis  of 
Christine's  character.  The  angelic  imperviousness 
of  Miss  Vance  to  properties  of  which  his  own  wicked- 
ness was  so  keenly  aware  in  Christine  might  have 
made  him  laugh,  if  it  had  not  been  such  a  serious, 
affair  with  him.  As  it  was,  he  smiled  to  think  how 
very  different!}'  Alma  Leighton  would  have  judged 
her  from  Miss  Vance's  premises.  He  liked  that 
clear  vision  of  Alma's  even  when  it  pierced  his  own 
disguises.  Yes,  that  was  the  light  he  had  let  die 
out,  and  it  mi.;ht  have  shone  upon  his  path  through 
life.  Beaton  never  felt  so  poignantly  the  dis- 
advantage of  having  on  any  given  occasion  been 
wanting  to  his  own  interests  through  his  self-love 
as  in  this.  He  had  no  one  to  blame  but  himself  for 
what  had  happened,  but  he  blamed  Alma  for  what 
might  happen  in  the  future  because  she  shut  out  the 
way  of  retrieval  and  return.  When  he  thought  of 
the  attitude  she  had  taken  toward  him,  it  seemed 
incredible,  and  he  was  always  longing  to  give  her  a 
final  chance  to  reverse  her  final  judgment.  It 
appeared  to  him  that  the  time  had  come  for  this 
now,  if  ever. 


XV. 


WHILE  we  are  still  young  we  feel  a  kind  of  pride,, 
a  sort  of  fierce  pleasure,  in  any  important  experi- 
ence, such  as  we  have  read  of  or  heard  of  in  the 
lives  of  others,  no  matter  how  painful.  It  was  this 
pride,  this  pleasure,  which  Beaton  now  felt  in  realis- 
ing that  the  toils  of  fate  were  about  him,  that 
between  him  and  a  future  of  which  Christine  Dry- 
foos  must  be  the  genius,  there  was  nothing  but  the 
will,  the  mood,  the  fancy  of  a  girl  who  had  not 
given  him  the  hope  that  either  could  ever  again  be 
in  his  favour.  He  had  nothing  to  trust  to,  in  fact, 
but  his  knowledge  that  he  had  once  had  them  all ; 
she  did  not  deny  that ;  but  neither  did  she  conceal 
that  he  had  flung  away  his  power  over  them,  and 
she  had  told  him  that  they  never  could  be  his  again. 
A  man  knows  that  he  can  love  and  wholly  cease  to 
love,  not  once  merely,  but  several  times ;  he  recog- 
nises the  fact  in  regard  to  himself,  both  theoretically 
and  practically ;  but  in  regard  to  women  he  cherishes 
the  superstition  of  the  romances  that  love  is  once 
for  all,  and  for  ever.  It  was  because  Beaton  would 
not  believe  that  Alma  Leigh  ton,  being  a  woman, 
could  put  him  out  of  her  heart  after  suffering  him 


302  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

to  steal  into  it,  that  he  now  hoped  anything  from 
her,  and  she  had  been  so  explicit  when  they  last 
spoke  of  that  affair  that  he  did  not  hope  much. 
He  said  to  himself  that  he  was  going  to  cast  hirri- 
self  on  her  mercy,  to  take  whatever  chance  of 
life,  love,  and  work  there  was  in  her  having  the 
smallest  pity  on  him.  If  she  would  have  none, 
then  there  was  but  one  thing  he  could  do  :  marry 
Christine  and  go  abroad.  He  did  not  see  how  he 
could  bring  this  alternative  to  bear  upon  Alma; 
even  if  she  knew  what  he  would  do  in  case  of  a 
final  rejection,  he  had  grounds  for  fearing  she  would 
not  care ;  but  he  brought  it  to  bear  upon  himself, 
and  it  nerved  him  to  a  desperate  courage.  He 
could  hardly  wait  for  evening  to  come,  before  he 
went  to  see  her ;  when  it  came,  it  seemed  to  have 
come  too  soon.  He  had  wrought  himself  thoroughly 
into  the  conviction  that  he  was  in  earnest,  and  that 
everything  depended  upon  her  answer  to  him,  but 
it  was  not  till  he  found  himself  in  her  presence,  and 
alone  with  her,  that  he  realised  the  truth  of  his 
conviction.  Then  the  influences  of  her  grace,  her 
gaiety,  her  arch  beauty,  above  all,  her  good  sense, 
penetrated  his  soul  like  a  subtle  intoxication,  and  he 
"said  to  himself  that  he  was  right;  he  could  not 
live  without  her ;  these  attributes  of  hers  were  what 
he  needed  to  win  him,  to  cheer  him,  to  charm  him, 
to  guide  him.  He  longed  so  to  please  her,  to  in- 
gratiate himself  with  her,  that  he  attempted  to  be 
light  like  her  in  his  talk,  but  lapsed  into  abysmal 
absences,  and  gloomy  recesses  of  introspection. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  303 

"  What  are  you  laughing  at  ? "  he  asked,  suddenly 
starting  from  one  of  these. 

"  What  you  are  thinking  of." 

"  It 's  nothing  to  laugh  at.  Do  you  know  what  it 
is  I  'm  thinking  of  1 ' 

"  Don't  tell,  if  it 's  dreadful." 

"  Oh,  I  dare  say  you  wouldn't  think  it 's  dreadful," 
he  said,  with  bitterness.  "It's  simply  the  case  of  a 
man  who  has  made  a  fool  of  himself,  and  sees  no 
help  of  retrieval  in  himself." 

"  Can  any  one  else  help  a  man  unmake  a  fool  of 
himself  1 "  she  asked,  with  a  smile. 

"Yes.     In  a  case  like  this." 

"Dear  me  !     This  is  very  interesting." 

She  did  not  ask  him  what  the  case  was,  but  he 
vvas  launched  now,  and  he  pressed  on.  "  I  am  the 
man  who  has  made  a  fool  of  himself " 

"  Oh  ! " 

"  And  you  can  help  me  out  if  you  will.  Alma,  I 
wish  you  could  see  me  as  I  really  am." 

"  Do  you,  Mr.  Beaton  1     Perhaps  I  do." 

"No;  you  don't.  You  formulated  me  in  a  cer- 
tain way,  and  you  won't  allow  for  the  change  that 
takes  place  in  every  one.  You  have  changed ;  why 
shouldn't  I  ? " 

"  Has  this  to  do  with  your  having  made  a  fool  of 
yourself  ? " 

"Yes." 

"  Oh  !     Then  I  don't  see  how  you  have  changed." 

She  laughed,  and  he  too,  ruefully.  "  You  're  cruel. 
Not  but  what  I  deserve  your  mockery.  But  the 
2T 


304       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

Change  was  not  from  the  capacity  of  making  a  fool 
of  myself.  I  suppose  I  shall  always  do  that  more 
or  less — unless  you  help  me.  Alma !  Why  can't 
you  have  a  little  compassion  ?  You  know  that  I 
must  always  love  you." 

"  Nothing  makes  me  doubt  that  like  your  saying  it, 
Mr.  Beaton.  But  now  you  've  broken  your  word — 

"  You  are  to  blame  for  that.  You  knew  I  couldn't 
keep  it ! " 

"Yes,  I'm  to  blame.  I  was  wrong  to  let  you 
•come — after  that.  And  so  I  forgive  you  for  speak- 
ing to  me  in  that  way  again.  But  it 's  perfectly  im- 
possible and  perfectly  useless  for  me  to  hear  you  any 
more  on  that  subject ;  and  so — good-bye  ! " 

She  rose,  and  he  perforce  with  her.  "And  do 
you  mean  it  1 "  he  asked.  "  For  ever  ? " 

"  For  ever.  This  is  truly  the  last  time  I  will  ever 
see  you  if  I  can  help  it.  Oh,  I  feel  sorry  enough  for 
you ! "  she  said,  with  a  glance  at  his  face.  "  I  do 
believe  you  are  in  earnest.  But  it 's  too  late  now. 
Don't  let  us  talk  about  it  any  more  !  But  we  shall, 
if  we  meet,  and  so " 

"  And  so  good-bye  !  Well  I  've  nothing  more  to 
say,  and  I  might  as  well  say  that.  I  think  you  Ve 
been  very  good  to  me.  It  seems  to  me  as  if  you  had 
been — shall  I  say  it  1 — trying  to  give  me  a  chance. 
Is  that  so  ? " 

She  dropped  her  eyes  and  did  not  answer. 

"  You  found  it  was  no  use !  Well,  I  thank  you 
for  trying.  It's  curious  to  think  that  I  once  had 
your  trust,  your  regard,  and  now  I  haven't  it.  You 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  305 

don't  mind  my  remembering  that  I  had  1  It  '11  be 
some  little  consolation,  and  I  believe  it  will  be  some 
help.  I  know  I  can't  retrieve  the  past  now.  It  is 
too  late.  It  seems  too  preposterous — perfectly  lurid 
— that  I  could  have  been  going  to  tell  you  what  a 
tangle  I  'd  got  myself  in,  and  to  ask  you  to  help 
untangle  me.  I  must  choke  in  the  infernal  coil,  but 
I  'd  like  to  have  the  sweetness  of  your  pity  in  it — 
whatever  it  is." 

She  put  out  her  hand.  "  Whatever  it  is.  I  do  pity 
you  ;  I  said  that." 

"  Thank  you."  He  kissed  the  hand  she  gave  him 
and  went. 

He  had  gone  on  some  such  terms  before ;  was  it 
now  for  the  last  time  ?  She  believed  it  was.  She 
felt  in  herself  a  satiety,  a  fatigue,  in  which  his  good 
looks,  his  invented  airs  and  poses,  his  real  trouble, 
were  all  alike  repulsive.  She  did  not  acquit  herself 
of  the  wrong  of  having  let  him  think  she  might  yet 
have  liked  him  as  she  once  did ;  but  she  had  been 
honestly  willing  to  see  whether  she  could.  It  had 
mystified  her  to  find  that  when  they  first  met  in 
New  York,  after  their  summer  in  St.  Barnaby,  she 
cared  nothing  for  him ;  she  had  expected  to  punish 
him  for  his  neglect,  and  then  fancy  him  as  before, 
but  she  did  not.  More  and  more  she  saw  him  selfish 
and  mean,  weak-willed,  narrow-minded  and  hard- 
hearted ;  and  aimless,  with  all  his  talent.  She  ad- 
mired his  talent  in  proportion  as  she  learned  more 
of  artists,  and  perceived  how  uncommon  it  was ;  but 
she  said  to  herself  that  if  she  were  going  to  devote 


306  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

herself  to  art,  she  would  do  it  at  first  hand.  She 
was  perfectly  serene  and  happy  in  her  final  rejection 
of  Beaton  ;  he  had  worn  out  not  only  her  fancy,  but 
her  sympathy  too. 

This  was  what  her  mother  would  not  believe  when 
Alma  reported  the  interview  to  her ;  she  would  not 
believe  it  was  the  last  time  they  should  meet ;  death 
itself  can  hardly  convince  us  that  it  is  the  last  time 
of  anything,  of  everything  between  ourselves  and 
the  dead.  "  Well,  Alma,"  she  said,  "  I  hope  you  '11 
never  regret  what  you  Ve  done." 

"  You  may  be  sure  I  shall  not  regret  it.  If  ever 
I  'm  low-spirited  about  anything,  I  '11  think  of  giving 
Mr.  Beaton  his  freedom,  and  that  will  cheer  me  up." 

"  And  don't  you  expect  to  get  married  ?  Do  you 
intend  to  be  an  old  maid  ?  "  demanded  her  mother, 
in  the  bonds  of  the  superstition  women  have  so  long 
been  under  to  the  effect  that  every  woman  must 
wish  to  get  married,  if  for  no  other  purpose  than  to 
avoid  being  an  old  maid. 

"  Well,  mamma,"  said  Alma,  "  I  intend  being  a 
young  one  for  a  few  years  yet ;  and  then  I  '11  see. 
If  I  meet  the  right  person,  ail  well  and  good  ;  if  not, 
not.  But  I  shall  pick  and  chose,  as  a  man  does ;  I 
won't  merely  be  picked  and  chosen." 

"  You  can't  help  yourself ;  you  may  be  very  glad 
if  you  are  picked  and  chosen." 

"  What  nonsense,  mamma !  A  girl  can  get  any 
man  she  wants,  if  she  goes  about  it  the  right  way. 
And  when  my  '  fated  fairy  prince '  comes  along,  I 
shall  just  simply  make  furious  love  to  him,  and  grab 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       307 

him.  Of  course,  I  shall  make  a  decent  pretence  of 
talking  in  my  sleep.  I  believe  it 's  done  that  way, 
more  than  half  the  time.  The  fated  fairy  prince 
wouldn't  see  the  princess  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  if 
she  didn't  say  something ;  he  would  go  mooning 
along  after  the  maids  of  honour." 

Mrs.  Leighton  tried  to  look  unspeakable  horror ; 
but  she  broke  down  and  laughed.  "  Well,  you  are 
a  strange  girl,  Alma." 

"  I  don't  know  about  that.  But  one  thing  I  do 
know,  mamma,  and  that  is  that  Prince  Beaton  isn't 
the  F.  F.  P.  for  me.  How  strange  you  are,  mamma ! 
Don't  you  think  it  would  be  perfectly  disgusting  to 
accept  a  person  you  didn't  care  for,  and  let  him  go 
on  and  love  you  and  marry  you ?  It's  sickening." 

"  Why,  certainly,  Alma.  It 's  only  because  I  know 
you  did  care  for  him  once " 

"And  now  I  don't.  And  he  didn't  care  for  me 
once,  and  now  he  does.  And  so  we  're  quits." 

"  If  I  could  believe— 

"  You  had  better  brace  up  and  try,  mamma ;  for 
as  Mr.  Fulkerson  says,  it 's  as  sure  as  guns.  From 
the  crown  of  his  head  to  the  sole  of  his  foot,  he 's 
loathsome  to  me ;  and  he  keeps  getting  loathsomer. 
Ugh  !  Good  night ! " 


XVI. 

"  WELL,  I  guess  she 's  given  him  the  grand  bounce, 
at  last,"  said  Fulkerson  to  March  in  one  of  their 
moments  of  confidence  at  the  office.  "  That 's  Mad's 
inference  from  appearances — and  disappearances; 
and  some  little  hints  from  Ma  Leigh  ton." 

"Well,  I  don't  know  that  I  have  any  criticisms 
to  offer,"  said  March.  "  It  may  be  bad  for  Beaton, 
but  it's  a  very  good  thing  for  Miss  Leighton.  Upon 
the  whole,  I  believe  I  congratulate  her." 

"  Well,  I  don't  know.  I  always  kind  of  hoped  it 
would  turn  out  the  other  way.  You  know  I  always 
had  a  sneaking  fondness  for  the  fellow." 

"Miss  Leighton  seems  not  to  have  had." 

"It's  a  pity  she  hadn't.  I  tell  you,  March,  it 
ain't  so  easy  for  a  girl  to  get  married,  here  in  the 
East,  that  she  can  afford  to  despise  any  chance." 

"  Isn't  that  rather  a  low  view  of  it  1 " 

"It's  a  common-sense  view.  Beaton  has  the 
making  of  a  first-rate  fellow  in  him.  He 's  the  raw 
material  of  a  great  artist  and  a  good  citizen.  All 
he  wants  is  somebody  to  take  him  in  hand  and  keep 
him  from  makin'  an  ass  of  himself  and  kickin'  over 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  309 

the  traces  generally,  and  ridin'  two  or  three  horses 
bareback  at  once." 

"  It  seems  a  simple  problem,  though  the  metaphor: 
is  rather  complicated,"  said  March.  "  But  talk  to 
Miss  Leighton  about  it.  /  haven't  given  Beaton 
the  grand  bounce." 

He  began  to  turn  over  the  manuscripts  on  his 
table,  and  Fulkerson  went  away.  But  March  found 
himself  thinking  of  the  matter  from  time  to  time 
during  the  day,  and  he  spoke  to  his  wife  about  it 
when  he  went  home.  She  surprised  him  by  taking 
Fulkerson's  view  of  it. 

"  Yes,  it 's  a  pity  she  couldn't  have  made  up  her 
mind  to  have  him.  It 's  better  for  a  woman  to  be 
married." 

"  I  thought  Paul  only  went  so  far  as  to  say  it  was 
well.  But  what  would  become  of  Miss  Leighton's 
artistic  career  if  she  married  1 " 

"  Oh,  her  artistic  career ! "  said  Mrs.  March,  with 
matronly  contempt  of  it. 

"  But  look  here  ! "  cried  her  husband.  "  Suppose 
she  doesn't  like  him  ? " 

"How  can  a  girl  of  that  age  tell  whether  she 
likes  any  one  or  not  ?  " 

"It  seems  to  me  you  were  able  to  tell  at  that  age, 
Isabel.  But  let 's  examine  this  thing.  (This  thing ! 
I  believe  Fulkerson  is  characterising  my  whole  par- 
lance, as  well  as  your  morals.)  Why  shouldn't  we 
rejoice  as  much  at  a  non-marriage  as  a  marriage  ? 
When  we  consider  the  enormous  risks  people  take 
in  linking  their  lives  together,  after  not  half  so 


310  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

much  thought  as  goes  to  an  ordinary  horse  trade,  I 
think  we  ought  to  be  glad  whenever  they  don't  do 
it.  I  believe  that  this  popular  demand  for  the 
matrimony  of  others  comes  from  our  novel-reading. 
•  We  get  to  thinking  that  there  is  no  other  happiness 
or  good  fortune  in  life  except  marriage ;  and  it 's 
offered  in  fiction  as  the  highest  premium  for  virtue, 
courage,  beauty,  learning,  and  saving  human  life. 
We  all  know  it  isn't.  We  know  that  in  reality 
marriage  is  dog  cheap,  and  anybody  can  have  it 
for  the  asking — if  he  keeps  asking  enough  people. 
By-and-by  some  fellow  will  wake  up  and  see  that  a 
first-class  story  can  be  written  from  the  anti-marriage 
point  of  view ;  and  he  '11  begin  with  an  engaged 
couple,  and  devote  his  novel  to  disengaging  them, 
and  rendering  them  separately  happy  ever  after  in 
the  cUnofiment.  It  will  make  his  everlasting  for- 
tune." 

"  Why  don't  you  write  it,  Basil  1 "  she  asked.  "It 's 
a  delightful  idea.  You  could  do  it  splendidly." 

He  became  fascinated  with  the  notion.  He  de- 
veloped it  in  detail ;  but  at  the  end  he  sighed  and 
said,  "With  this  Every  Other  Week  work  on  my 
hands,  of  course  I  can't  attempt  a  novel.  But  per- 
haps I  sha'n't  have  it  long." 

She  was  instantly  anxious  to  know  what  he 
meant,  and  the  novel  and  Miss  Leighton's  affair 
were  both  dropped  out  of  their  thoughts.  "  What 
do  you  mean  ?  Has  Mr.  Fulkerson  said  anything 
yet?" 

"  Not  a  word.     He  knows  no  more  about  it  than 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  311 

I  do.  Dryfoos  hasn't  spoken,  and  we  're  both  afraid 
to  ask  him.  Of  course,  I  couldn't  ask  him." 

"  No." 

"  But  it 's  pretty  uncomfortable,  to  be  kept  hang- 
ing by  the  gills,  so,  as  Fulkerson  says." 

"  Yes,  we  don't  know  what  to  do." 

March  and  Fulkerson  said  the  same  to  each  other; 
and  Fulkerson  said  that  if  the  old  man  pulled  out, 
he  did  not  know  what  would  happen.  He  had  no 
capital  to  carry  the  thing  on,  and  the  very  fact  that 
the  old  man  had  pulled  out  would  damage  it  so  that 
it  would  be  hard  to  get  anybody  else  to  put  it.  In 
the  meantime  Fulkerson  was  running  Conrad's 
office-work,  when  he  ought  to  be  looking  after  the 
outside  interests  of  the  thing ;  and  he  could  not  see 
the  day  when  he  could  get  married. 

"  I  don't  know  which  it 's  worse  for,  March  :  you 
or  me.  I  don't  know,  under  the  circumstances, 
whether  it 's  worse  to  have  a  family  or  to  want  to 
^ave  one.  Of  course — of  course !  We  can't  hurry 
the  old  man  up.  It  wouldn't  be  decent,  and  it 
would  be  dangerous.  We  got  to  wait." 

He  almost  decided  to  draw  upon  Dryfoos.  for  some 
money ;  he  did  not  need  any,  but  he  said  may  be  the 
demand  would  act  as  a  hint  upon  him.  One  day, 
about  a  week  after  Alma's  final  rejection  of  Beaton, 
Dryfoos  came  into  March's  office.  Fulkerson  was  out, 
but  the  old  man  seemed  not  to  have  tried  to  see  him. 

He  put  his  hat  on  the  floor  by  his  chair,  after  he 
sat  down,  and  looked  at  March  a  while  with  his  old 
eyes,  which  had  the  vitreous  glitter  of  old  eyes 


312        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

stimulated  to  sleeplessness.  Then  he  said  abruptly, 
"  Mr.  March,  how  would  you  like  to  take  this  thing 
off  my  hands  ? " 

"  I  don't  understand,  exactly,"  March  began  ;  but 
of  course  he  understood  that  Dryfoos  was  offering  to 
let  him  have  Every  Other  Week,  on  some  terms  or 
other,  and  his  heart  leaped  with  hope. 

The  old  man  knew  he  understood,  and  so  he  did 
not  explain.  He  said,  "I  am  going  to  Europe,  to 
take  my  family  there.  The  doctor  thinks  it  might 
do  my  wife  some  good  ;  and  I  ain't  very  well  myself 
and  my  girls  both  want  to  go ;  and  so  we  're  goin'. 
If  you  want  to  take  this  thing  off  my  hands,  I  reckon 
I  can  let  you  have  it  in  'most  any  shape  you  say. 
You're  all  settled  here  in  New  York,  and  I  don't 
suppose  you  want  to  break  up,  much,  at  your  time 
of  life,  and  I  've  been  thinkin'  whether  you  wouldn't 
like  to  take  the  thing." 

The  word,  which  Dryfoos  had  now  used  three 
times,  made  March  at  last  think  of  Fulkerson ;  he 
had  been  filled  too  full  of  himself  to  think  of  any  one 
else  till  he  had  mastered  the  notion  of  such  wonderful 
good  fortune  as  seemed  about  falling  to  him.  But 
now,  he  did  think  of  Fulkerson,  and  with  some 
shame  and  confusion ;  for  he  remembered  how  when 
Dryfoos  had  last  approached  him  there  on  the 
business  of  his  connection  with  Every  Other  Week,  he 
had  been  very  haughty  with  him,  and  told  him  that 
he  did  not  know  him  in  this  connection.  He  blushed 
to  find  how  far  his  thoughts  had  now  run  without 
jencountering  this  obstacle  of  etiquette. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  313 

"  Have  you  spoken  to  Mr.  Fulkerson  1 "  he  asked. 

"No,  I  hain't.  It  ain't  a  question  of  manage- 
ment. It 's  a  question  of  buying  and  selling.  I  offer 
the  thing  to  you  first.  I  reckon  Fulkerson  couldn't 
get  on  very  well  without  you." 

March  saw  the  real  difference  in  the  two  cases, 
and  he  was  glad  to  see  it,  because  he  could  act  more 
decisively  if  not  hampered  by  an  obligation  to  con- 
sistency. "  I  am  gratified,  of  course,  Mr.  Dryfoos ; 
extremely  gratified ;  and  it 's  no  use  pretending  that 
I  shouldn't  be  happy  beyond  bounds  to  get  posses- 
sion of  Every  Other  Week.  But  I  don't  feel  quite 
free  to  talk  about  it  apart  from  Mr.  Fulkerson." 

"  Oh,  all  right ! "  said  the  old  man,  with  quick 
offence. 

March  hastened  to  say,  "  I  feel  bound  to  Mr.  Ful- 
kerson in  every  way.  He  got  me  to  come  here,  and 
I  couldn't  even  seem  to  act  without  him." 

He  put  it  questioningly,  and  the  old  man  an- 
swered, "Yes,  I  can  see  that.  When  '11  he  be  in  1  I 
can  wait."  But  he  looked  impatient. 

"Very  soon,  now,"  said  March,  looking  at  his 
watch.  "  He  was  only  to  be  gone  a  moment,"  and 
while  he  went  on  to  talk  with  Dryfoos,  he  wondered 
why  the  old  man  should  have  come  first  to  speak 
with  him,  and  whether  it  was  from  some  obscure 
wish  to  make  him  reparation  for  displeasures  in  the 
past,  or  from  a  distrust  or  dislike  of  Fulkerson. 
Whichever  light  he  looked  at  it  in,  it  was  flattering. 

"Do  you  think  of  going  abroad  soon  ?"  he  asked. 

"What?  Yes— I  don't  know— I  reckon.  We 
VOL.  II.— 14 


314        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

got  our  passage  engaged.  It's  on  one  of  them 
French  boats.  We  're  goin'  to  Paris." 

"Oh!  That  will  be  interesting  to  the  young 
ladies." 

"Yes.  I  reckon  we're  goin'  for  them.  Tain't 
likely  my  Avife  and  me  would  want  to  pull  up  stakes 
at  our  age,"  said  the  old  man  sorrowfully. 

"  But  you  may  find  it  do  you  good,  Mr.  Dryfoos," 
said  March,  with  a  kindness  that  was  real,  mixed  as 
it  was  with  the  selfish  interest  he  now  had  in  the 
intended  voyage. 

"  Well,  may  be,  may  be,"  sighed  the  old  man ;  and 
he  dropped  his  head  forward.  "  It  don't  make  a 
great  deal  of  difference  what  we  do  or  we  don't  do, 
for  the  few  years  left." 

"I  hope  Mrs.  Dryfoos  is  as  well  as  usual,"  said 
March,  finding  the  ground  delicate  and  difficult. 

"MiddhV,  middlin',"  said  the  old  man.  "My 
daughter  Christine,  she  ain't  very  well." 

"Oh,"  said  March.  It  was  quite  impossible  for 
him  to  affect  a  more  explicit  interest  in  the  fact. 
He  and  Dryfoos  sat  silent  for  a  few  moments,  and 
he  was  vainly  casting  about  in  his  thought  for  some- 
thing else  which  would  tide  them  over  the  interval 
till  Fulkerson  came,  when  he  heard  his  step  on  the 
stairs. 

"  Hello,  hello  !"  he  said.  "  Meeting  of  the  clans  !" 
It  was  always  a  meeting  of  the  clans,  with  Fulker- 
son, or  a  field  day,  or  an  extra  session,  or  a  regular 
conclave,  whenever  he  saw  people  of  any  common 
interest  together.  "  Hain't  seen  you  here  for  a  good 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  315 

while,  Mr.  Dryfoos.  Did  think  some  of  running 
away  with  Every  Other  Week  one  while,  but  couldn't 
seem  to  work  March  up  to  the  point." 

He  gave  Dryfoos  his  hand,  and  pushed  aside  the 
papers  on  the  corner  of  March's  desk,  and  sat  down 
there,  and  went  on  briskly  with  the  nonsense  he 
could  always  talk,  while  he  was  waiting  for  another 
to  develop  any  matter  of  business ;  he  told  March 
afterward  that  he  scented  business  in  the  air  as  soon 
as  he  came  into  the  room  where  he  and  Dryfoos 
were  sitting. 

Dryfoos  seemed  determined  to  leave  the  word  to 
March,  who  said,  after  an  inquiring  look  at  him, 
"Mr.  Dryfoos  has  been  proposing  to  let  us  have 
Every  Other  Week,  Fulkerson." 

"  Well,  that 's  good  ;  that  suits  yours  truly ;  March 
&  Fulkerson,  publishers  and  proprietors,  won't  pre- 
tend it  don't,  if  the.  terms  are  all  right." 

"  The  terms,"  said  the  old  man,  "  are  whatever 
you  want  'em.  I  haven't  got  any  more  use  for  the 

concern •"  He  gulped,  and  stopped  ;  they  knew 

what  he  was  thinking  of,  and  they  looked  down  in 
pity.  He  went  on.  "  I  woon't  put  any  more  money 
in  it ;  but  what  I  've  put  in  a'ready,  can  stay  ;  and 
you  can  pay  me  four  per  cent." 

He  got  upon  his  feet ;  and  March  and  Fulkerson 
stood,  too. 

"  Well,  I  call  that  pretty  white,"  said  Fulkerson. 
"  It 's  a  bargain  as  far  as  I  'm  concerned.  I  suppose 
you  '11  want  to  talk  it  over  with  your  wife,  March  ? " 

"  Yes ;  I  shall,"  said  March.     "  I  can  see  that  it's 


316  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

a  great  chance ;  but  I  want  to  talk  it  over  with  my 
wife." 

"  Well,  that 's  right,"  said  the  old  man.  "  Let  me 
hear  from  you  to-morrow." 

He  went  out,  and  Fulkerson  began  to  dance  round 
the  room.  He  caught  March  about  his  stalwart  girth 
and  tried  to  make  him  waltz ;  the  office-boy  came  to 
the  door,  and  looked  on  with  approval. 

"  Come,  come,  you  idiot ! "  said  March,  rooting 
himself  to  the  carpet. 

"  It 's  just  throwing  the  thing  into  our  mouths," 
said  Fulkerson.  "  The  wedding  will  be  this  day 
week.  No  cards !  Teedle-lumpty  diddle !  Teedle- 
lumpty-dee  !  What  do  you  suppose  he  means  by  it, 
March  ? "  he  asked,  bringing  himself  soberly  up,  of  a 
sudden.  "  What  is  his  little  game  ?  Or  is  he  crazy  ? 
It  don't  seem  like  the  Dryfoos  of  my  previous 
acquaintance." 

"  I  suppose,"  March  suggested,  "  that  he 's  got 
money  enough,  so  that  he  don't  care  for  this " 

"  Pshaw  !  You  're  a  poet !  Don't  you  know  that 
the  more  money  that  kind  of  man  has  got,  the  more 
he  cares  for  money  1  It 's  some  fancy  of  his — like 

having  Lindau's  funeral  at  his  house By  jings, 

March,  I  believe  you  're  his  fancy  ! " 

"  Oh,  now  !     Don't  you  be  a  poet,  Fulkerson  ! " 

"  I  do  !  He  seemed  to  take  a  kind  of  shine  to  you 
from  the  day  you  wouldn't  turn  off  old  Lindau ;  he 
did  indeed.  It  kind  of  shook  him  up.  It  made  him 
think  you  had  something  in  you.  He  was  deceived 
by  appearances.  Look  here  !  I  'm  going  round  to 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  317 

see  Mrs.  March  with  you,  and  explain  the  thing  to 
her.  I  know  Mrs.  March  !  She  wouldn't  believe 
you  knew  what  you  were  going  in  for.  She  has  a 
great  respect  for  your  mind,  but  she  don't  think 
you  've  got  any  sense.  Heigh  1 " 

"  All  right,"  said  March,  glad  of  the  notion ;  and 
it  was  really  a  comfort  to  have  Fulkerson  with  him 
to  develop  all  the  points ;  and  it  was  delightful  to 
see  how  clearly  and  quickly  she  seized  them  ;  it 
made  March  proud  of  her.  She  was  only  angry 
that  they  had  lost  any  time  in  coming  to  submit 
so  plain  a  case  to  her.  Mr.  Dryfoos  might  change 
his  mind  in  the  night,  and  then  everything  would 
be  lost.  They  must  go  to  him  instantly,  and  tell 
him  that  they  accepted ;  they  must  telegraph  him. 

"Might  as  well  send  a  district  messenger;  he'd 
get  there  next  week,"  said  Fulkerson.  "  No,  no ! 
It'll  all  keep  till  to-morrow,  and  be  the  better  for 
it.  If  he  's  got  this  fancy  for  March,  as  I  say,  he 
ain't  agoing  to  change  it  in  a  single  night.  People 
don't  change  their  fancies  for  March  in  a  lifetime. 
Heigh  ? " 

When  Fulkerson  turned  up  very  early  at  the 
office  next  morning,  as  March  did,  he  was  less 
strenuous  about  Dryfoos's  fancy  for  March.  It  was 
as  if  Miss  Woodburn  might  have  blown  cold  upon 
that  theory,  as  something  unjust  to  his  own  merit, 
for  which  she  would  naturally  be  more  jealous  than 
he. 

March  told  him,  what  he  had  forgotten  to  tell 
him  the  day  before,  though  he  had  been  trying,  all 


318  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

through  their  excited  talk,  to  get  it  in,  that  the 
Dryfooses  were  going  abroad. 

"  Oh,  ho  ! "  cried  Fulkerson.  "  That 's  the  milk  in 
the  cocoanut,  is  it  ?  Well,  I  thought  there  must  be 
something." 

But  this  fact  had  not  changed  Mrs.  March  at  all 
in  her  conviction  that  it  was  Mr.  Dryfoos's  fancy 
for  her  husband  which  had  moved  him  to  make  him 
this  extraordinary  offer,  and  she  reminded  him  that 
it  had  first  been  made  to  him,  without  regard  to 
Fulkerson.  "And  perhaps,"  she  went  on,  "Mr. 
Dryfoos  has  been  changed — softened ;  and  doesn't 
find  money  all  in  all  any  more.  He  's  had  enough 
to  change  him,  poor  old  man  ! " 

"  Does  anything  from  without  change  us  1 "  her 
husband  mused  aloud.  "  We  're  brought  up  to 
think  so  by  the  novelists,  who  really  have  the 
charge  of  people's  thinking,  nowadays.  But  I 
doubt  it,  especially  if  the  thing  outside  is  some 
great  event,  something  cataclysmal,  like  this  tre- 
mendous sorrow  of  Dryfoos's." 

"Then  what  is  it  that  changes  us?  "  demanded  his 
wife,  almost  angry  with  him  for  his  heresy. 

"Well,  it  won't  do  to  say,  the  Holy  Spirit  in- 
dwelling. That  would  sound  like  cant  at  this  day. 
But  the  old  fellows  that  used  to  say  that  had  some 
glimpses  of  the  truth.  They  knew  that  it  is  the 
still,  small  voice  that  the  soul  heeds,  not  the 
deafening  blasts  of  doom.  I  suppose  I  should  have 
to  say  that  we  didn't  change  at  all.  We  develop. 
There 's  the  making  of  several  characters  in  each  of 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  319 

us ;  we  are  each  several  characters,  and  sometimes 
this  character  has  the  lead  in  us,  and  sometimes 
that.  From  what  Fulkerson  has  told  me  of  Dry- 
foos  I  should  say  he  had  always  had  the  potentiality 
of  better  things  in  him  than  he  has  ever  been  yet ; 
and  perhaps  the  time  has  come  for  the  good  to 
have  its  chance.  The  growth  in  one  direction  has 
stopped ;  it 's  begun  in  another ;  that 's  all.  The 
man  hasn't  been  changed  by  his  son's  death ;  it 
stunned,  it  benumbed  him ;  but  it  couldn't  change 
him.  It  was  an  event,  like  any  other,  and  it  had 
to  happen  as  much  as  his  being  born.  It  was  fore- 
cast from  the  beginning  of  time,  and  was  as  en- 
tirely an  effect  of  his  coming  into  the  world " 

"  Basil !  Basil  I "  cried  his  wife.  "  This  is  fatal- 
ism ! " 

"  Then  you  think,"  he  said,  "  that  a  sparrow  falls 
to  the  ground  without  the  will  of  God  ? "  and  he 
laughed  provokingly.  But  he  went  on  more  soberly. 
"  I  don't  know  what  it  all  means,  Isabel,  though  I 
believe  it  means  good.  What  did  Christ  himself 
say  ?  That  if  one  rose  from  the  dead  it  would  not 
avail.  And  yet  we  are  always  looking  for  the  mira- 
culous !  I  believe  that  unhappy  old  man  truly  grieves 
for  his  son,  whom  he  treated  cruelly  without  the  final 
intention  of  cruelty,  for  he  loved  him  and  wished  to 
be  proud  of  him ;  but  I  don't  think  his  death  has 
changed  him,  any  more  than  the  smallest  event  in 
the  chain  of  events  remotely  working  through  his 
nature  from  the  beginning.  But  why  do  you  think 
he 's  changed  at  all  1  Because  he  offers  to  sell  me 
2U 


320  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

Every  Other  Week  on  easy  terms  ?  He  says  himself 
that  he  has  no  further  use  for  the  thing;  and  he 
knows  perfectly  well  that  he  couldn't  get  his  money 
out  of  it  now,  without  an  enormous  shrinkage.  He 
couldn't  appear  at  this  late  day  as  the  owner,  and 
sell  it  to  anybody  but  Fulkerson  and  me  for  a  fifth 
of  what  it's  cost  him.  He  can  sell  it  to  us  for  all 
it 's  cost  him ;  and  four  per  cent,  is  no  bad  interest 
on  his  money  till  we  can  pay  it  back.  It 's  a  good 
thing  for  us ;  but  we  have  to  ask  whether  Dryfoos 
has  done  us  the  good,  or  whether  it 's  the  blessing 
of  Heaven.  If  it 's  merely  the  blessing  of  Heaven,  I 
don't  propose  being  grateful  for  it." 

March  laughed  again,  and  his  wife  said,  "  It 's 
disgusting." 

"  It 's  business,"  he  assented.  "  Business  is  busi- 
ness; but  I  don't  say  it  isn't  disgusting.  Lindau 
had  a  low  opinion  of  it." 

"  I  think  that  with  all  his  faults  Mr.  Dryfoos  is  a 
better  man  than  Lindau,"  she  proclaimed. 

"  Well,  he 's  certainly  able  to  offer  us  a  better 
thing  in  Every  Other  Week,"  said  March. 

She  knew  he  was  enamoured  of  the  literary  finish 
of  his  cynicism,  and  that  at  heart  he  was  as  humbly 
and  truly  grateful  as  she  was  for  the  good  fortune 
opening  to  them. 


XVII. 

BEATON  was  at  his  best  when  he  parted  for  the 
last  time  with  Alma  Leighton,  for  he  saw  then  that 
what  had  happened  to  him  was  the  necessary  conse- 
quence of  what  he  had  been,  if  not  what  he  had 
done.  Afterward  he  lost  this  clear  vision ;  he  began 
to  deny  the  fact ;  he  drew  upon  his  knowledge  of 
life,  and  in  arguing  himself  into  a  different  frame  of 
mind  he  alleged  the  case  of  different  people  who  had 
done  and  been  much  worse  things  than  he,  and  yet 
no  such  disagreeable  consequence  had  befallen  them. 
Then  he  saw  that  it  was  all  the  work  of  blind  chance, 
and  he  said  to  himself  that  it  was  this  that  made  him 
desperate,  and  willing  to  call  evil  his  good,  and  to 
take  his  own  wherever  he  could  find  it.  There  was  a 
great  deal  that  was  literary  and  factitious  and  tawdry 
in  the  mood  in  which  he  went  to  see  Christine  Dry- 
foos,  the  night  when  the  Marches  sat  talking  their 
prospects  over ;  and  nothing  that  was  decided  in  his 
purpose.  He  knew  what  the  drift  of  his  mind  was, 
but  he  had  always  preferred  to  let  chance  determine 
his  events,  and  now  since  chance  had  played  him 
such  an  ill  turn  with  Alma,  he  left  it  the  whole  re- 
sponsibility. Not  in  terms,  but  in  effect,  this  was 
14* 


322       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

his  thought  as  he  walked  on  uptown  to  pay  the  first 
of  the  visits  which  Dryfoos  had  practically  invited 
him  to  resume.  He  had  an  insolent  satisfaction  in 
having  delayed  it  so  long ;  if  he  was  going  back  he 
was  going  back  on  his  own  conditions,  and.  these 
were  to  be  as  hard  and  humiliating  as  he  could  make 
them.  But  this  intention  again  was  inchoate,  float- 
ing, the  stuff  of  an  intention,  rather  than  intention  ; 
an  expression  of  temperament  chiefly. 

He  had  been  expected  before  that.  Christine  had 
got  out  of  Mela  that  her  father  had  been  at  Beaton's 
studio,  and  then  she  had  gone  at  the  old  man  and 
got  from  him  every  smallest  fact  of  the  interview 
there.  She  had  flung  back  in  his  teeth  the  good-will 
toward  herself  with  which  he  had  gone  to  Beaton. 
She  was  furious  with  shame  and  resentment ;  she 
told  him  he  had  made  bad  worse,  that  he  had  made 
a  fool  of  himself  to  no  end ;  she  spared  neither  his 
age,  nor  his  grief-broken  spirit,  in  which  his  will 
could  not  rise  against  hers.  She  filled  the  house 
with  her  rage,  screaming  it  out  upon  him  ;  but  when 
her  fury  was  once  spent,  she  began  to  have  some 
hopes  from  what  her  father  had  done.  She  no 
longer  kept  her  bed;  every  evening  she  dressed 
herself  in  the  dress  Beaton  admired  the  most,  and 
sat  up  till  a  certain  hour  to  receive  him.  She  had 
fixed  a  day  in  her  own  mind  before  which,  if  he 
came,  she  would  forgive  him  all  he  had  made  her 
suffer :  the  mortification,  the  suspense,  the  despair. 
Beyond  this,  she  had  the  purpose  of  making  her 
father  go  to  Europe ;  she  felt  that  she  could  no 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       323 

longer  live  in  America,  with  the  double  disgrace 
that  had  been  put  upon  her. 

Beaton  rang,  and  while  the  servant  was  coming 
the  insolent  caprice  seized  him  to  ask  for  the  young 
ladies  instead  of  the  old  man,  as  he  had  supposed 
of  course  he  should  do.  The  maid  who  answered 
the  bell,  in  the  place  of  the  reluctant  Irishman  of 
other  days,  had  all  his  hesitation  in  admitting  that 
the  young  ladies  were  at  home. 

He  found  Mela  in  the  drawing-room.  At  sight  of 
him  she  looked  scared ;  but  she  seemed  to  be  reas- 
sured by  his  calm.  He  asked  if  he  was  not  to  have 
the  pleasure  of  seeing  Miss  Dryfoos  too ;  and  Mela 
said  she  reckoned  the  girl  had  gone  upstairs  to  tell 
her.  Mela  was  in  black,  and  Beaton  noted  how  well 
the  solid  sable  became  her  rich,  red  blond  beauty ; 
he  wondered  what  the  effect  would  be  with  Christine. 

But  she,  when  she  appeared,  was  not  in  mourning. 
He  fancied  that  she  wore  the  lustrous  black  silk, 
with  the  breadths  of  white  Venetian  lace  about  the 
neck  which  he  had  praised,  because  he  praised  it. 
Her  cheeks  burned  with  a  Jacqueminot  crimson, 
what  should  be  white  in  her  face  was  chalky  white. 
She  carried  a  plumed  ostrich  fan,  black  and  soft, 
and  after  giving  him  her  hand,  sat  down  and  waved 
it  to  and  fro  slowly,  as  he  remembered  her  doing 
the  night  they  first  met.  She  had  no  ideas,  except 
such  as  related  intimately  to  herself,  and  she  had  no 
gabble,  like  Mela ;  and  she  let  him  talk.  It  was 
past  the  day  when  she  had  promised  herself  she 
would  forgive  him ;  but  as  he  talked  on  she  felt  all 


324  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

her  passion  for  him  revived,  and  the  conflict  of  desires, 
the  desire  to  hate,  the  desire  to  love,  made  a  dizzying 
whirl  in  her  brain.  She  looked  at  him,  half  doubting 
whether  he  was  really  there  or  not.  He  had  never 
looked  so  handsome,  with  his  dreamy  eyes  floating 
under  his  heavy  overhanging  hair,  and  his  pointed 
brown  beard  defined  against  his  lustrous  shirt-front. 
His  mellowly  modulated,  mysterious  voice  lulled  her; 
when  Mela  made  an  errand  out  of  the  room,  and 
Beaton  crossed  to  her  and  sat  down  by  her  she 
shivered. 

"  Are  you  cold  ? "  he  asked,  and  she  felt  the  cruel 
mockery  and  exultant  consciousness  of  power  in  his 
tone,  as  perhaps  a  wild  thing  feels  captivity  in  the 
voice  of  its  keeper.  But  now,  she  said  she  would 
still  forgive  him  if  he  asked  her. 

Mela  came  back,  and  the  talk  fell  again  to  the 
former  level ;  but  Beaton  had  not  said  anything 
that  really  meant  what  she  wished,  and  she  saw  that 
he  intended  to  say  nothing.  Her  heart  began  to 
burn  like  a  fire  in  her  breast. 

"You  been  tellun'  him  about  our  goun'  to 
Europe  ? "  Mela  asked. 

"No,"  said  Christine  briefly,  and  looking  at  the 
fan  spread  out  on  her  lap. 

Beaton  asked  when ;  and  then  he  rose,  and  said 
if  it  was  so  soon,  he  supposed  he  should  not  see 
them  again,  unless  he  saw  them  in  Paris  j  he  might 
very  likely  run  over,  during  the  summer.  He  said 
to  himself  that  he  had  given  it  a  fair  trial  with 
Christine,  and  he  could  not  make  it  go. 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.  325 

Christine  rose,  with  a  kind  of  gasp,  and  mechani- 
cally followed  him  to  the  door  of  the  drawing-room ; 
Mela  came  too;  and  while  he  was  putting  on  his 
overcoat,  she  gurgled  and  bubbled  in  good-humour 
with  all  the  world.  Christine  stood  looking  at  him, 
and  thinking  how  handsomer  still  he  was  in  his  over- 
coat ;  and  that  fire  burned  fiercer  in  her.  She  felt 
him  more  than  life  to  her  and  knew  him  lost,  and 
the  frenzy  that  makes  a  woman  kill  the  man  she 
loves,  or  fling  vitriol  to  destroy  the  beauty  she  can- 
not have  for  all  hers,  possessed  her  lawless  soul. 
He  gave  his  hand  to  Mela,  and  said,  in  his  wind- 
harp  stop,  "  Good-bye." 

As  he  put  out  his  hand  to  Christine,  she  pushed 
it  aside  with  a  scream  of  rage ;  she  flashed  at  him, 
and  with  both  hands  made  a  feline  pass  at  the  face 
he  bent  toward  her.  He  sprang  back,,  and  after  an 
instant  of  stupefaction  he  pulled  open  the  door  be- 
hind him,  and  ran  out  into  the  street. 

"  Well,  Christine  Dryfoos  ! "  said  Mela.  "  Spag 
at  him  like  a  wild-cat ! " 

"  I  don't  care,"  Christine  shrieked.  "  I  '11  tear  his 
eyes  out ! "  She  flew  upstairs  to  her  own  room,  and 
left  the  burden  of  the  explanation  to  Mela,  who  did 
it  justice. 

Beaton  found  himself,  he  did  not  know  how,  in 
his  studio,  reeking  with  perspiration  and  breathless. 
He  must  almost  have  run.  He  struck  a  match  with 
a  shaking  hand,  and  looked  at  his  face  in  the  glass. 
He  expected  to  see  the  bleeding  marks  of  her  nails 
on  his  cheeks,  but  he  could  see  nothing.  He 


326        A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

grovelled  inwardly ;  it  was  all  so  low  and  coarse  and 
vulgar ;  it  was  all  so  just  and  apt  to  his  deserts. 

There  was  a  pistol  among  the  dusty  bric-a-brac  on 
the  mantel  which  he  had  kept  loaded  to  fire  at  a  cat 
in  the  area.  He  took  it  and  sat  looking  into  the 
muzzle,  wishing  it  might  go  off  by  accident  and  kill 
him.  It  slipped  through  his  hand  and  struck  the 
floor,  and  there  was  a  report;  he  sprang  into  the 
air,  feeling  that  he  had  been  shot.  But  he  found 
himself  still  alive,  with  only  a  burning  line  along  his 
cheek,  such  as  one  of  Christine's  finger-nails  might 
have  left. 

He  laughed  with  cynical  recognition  of  the  fact 
that  he  had  got  his  punishment  in  the  right  way,  and 
that  his  case  was  not  to  be  dignified  into  tragedy. 


XVIII. 

THE  Marches,  with  Fulkerson,  went  to  see  the 
Dryfooses  off  on  the  French  steamer.  There  was 
no  longer  any  business  obligation  on  them  to  be 
civil,  and  there  was  greater  kindness  for  that  reason 
in  the  attention  they  offered.  Every  Other  Week  had 
been  made  over  to  the  joint  ownership  of  March 
and  Fulkerson,  and  the  details  arranged  with  a 
hardness  on  Dryfoos's  side  which  certainly  left  Mrs. 
March  with  a  sense  of  his  incomplete  regeneration. 
Yet  when  she  saw  him  there  on  the  steamer,  she 
pitied  him ;  he  looked  wearied  and  bewildered ; 
even  his  wife,  with  her  twitching  head,  and  her 
prophecies  of  evil,  croaked  hoarsely  out,  while  she 
clung  to  Mrs.  March's  hand  where  they  sat  together 
till  the  leave-takers  were  ordered  ashore,  was  less 
pathetic.  Mela  was  looking  after  both  of  them,  and 
trying  to  cheer  them,  in  a  joyful  excitement.  "  I 
tell  'em  it's  goun'  to  add  ten  years  to  both  their 
lives,"  she  said.  "The  voyage '11  do  their  healths 
good ;  and  then,  we  're  gittun'  away  from  that 
miser'ble  pack  o'  servants  that  was  eatun'  us  up, 
there  in  New  York.  I  hate  the  place ! "  she  said, 
as  if  they  had  already  left  it.  "  Yes,  Mrs.  Mandel  's 


328  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

goun',  too,"  she  added,  following  the  direction  of 
Mrs.  March's  eyes  where  they  noted  Mrs.  Mandel 
speaking  to  Christine  on  the  other  side  of  the  cabin. 
"  Her  and  Christine  had  a  kind  of  a  spat,  and  she 
was  goun'  to  leave,  hut  here  only  the  other  day, 
Christine  offered  to  make  it  up  with  her,  and  now 
they're  as  thick  as  thieves.  Well,  I  reckon  we 
couldn't  very  well  'a'  got  along  without  her.  She 's 
about  the  only  one  that  speaks  French  in  this  family." 

Mrs.  March's  eyes  still  dwelt  upon  Christine's 
face  ;  it  was  full  of  a  furtive  wildness.  She  seemed 
to  be  keeping  a  watch  to  prevent  herself  from  look- 
ing as  if  she  were  looking  for  some  one.  "  Do  you 
know,"  Mrs.  March  said  to  her  husband  as  they 
jingled  along  homeward  in  the  Christopher  Street 
T^ob-tail  car,  "  I  thought  she  was  in  love  with  that  de- 
testable Mr.  Beaton  of  yours  at  one  time ;  and  that 
he  was  amusing  himself  with  her." 

"  I  can  bear  a  good  deal,  Isabel,"  said  March,  "  but 
I  wish  you  wouldn't  attribute  Beaton  to  me.  He 's 
the  invention  of  that  Mr.  Fulkerson  of  yours." 

"  Well,  at  any  rate,  I  hope,  now,  you  '11  both  get 
rid  of  him,  in  the  reforms  you  're  going  to  carry  out." 

These  reforms  were  for  a  greater  economy  in  the 
management  of  Every  Other  Week ;  but  in  their  very 
nature  they  could  not  include  the  suppression  of 
Beaton.  He  had  always  shown  himself  capable 
and  loyal  to  the  interests  of  the  magazine,  and  both 
the  new  owners  were  glad  to  keep  him.  He  was 
glad  to  stay,  though  he  made  a  gruff  pretence  of 
indifference,  when  they  came  to  look  over  the  new 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       329 

arrangement  with  him.  In  his  heart  he  knew  that 
he  was  a  fraud ;  but  at  least  he  could  say  to  himself 
with  truth  that  he  had  not  now  the  shame  of  taking 
Dryfoos's  money. 

March  and  Fulkerson  retrenched  at  several  points 
where  it  had  seemed  indispensable  to  spend,  as  long 
as  they  were  not  spending  their  own  :  that  was  only 
human.  Fulkerson  absorbed  Conrad's  department 
into  his,  and  March  found  that  he  could  dispense 
with  Kendricks  in  the  place  of  assistant  which  he 
had  lately  filled  since  Fulkerson  had  decided  that 
March  was  overworked.  They  reduced  the  number 
of  illustrated  articles,  and  they  systematised  the  pay- 
ment of  contributors  strictly  according  to  the  sales 
of  each  number,  on  their  original  plan  of  co-opera- 
tion :  they  had  got  to  paying  rather  lavishly  for 
material  without  reference  to  the  sales. 

Fulkerson  took  a  little  time  to  get  married,  and 
went  on  his  wedding  journey  out  to  Niagara,  and 
down  the  St.  Lawrence  to  Quebec  over  the  line  of 
travel  that  the  Marches  had  taken  in  their  wedding 
journey.  He  had  the  pleasure  of  going  from  Mon- 
treal to  Quebec  on  the  same  boat  on  which  he  first 
met  March. 

They  have  continued  very  good  friends,  and  their 
wives  are  almost  without  the  rivalry  that  usually 
embitters  the  wives  of  partners.  At  first  Mrs. 
March  did  not  like  Mrs.  Fulkerson's  speaking  of 
her  husband  as  the  Ownah,  and  March  as  the 
Edito'j  but  it  appeared  that  this  was  only  a  con- 
venient method  of  recognising  the  predominant 


330  A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

quality  in  each,  and  was  meant  neither  to  affirm 
nor  to  deny  anything.  Colonel  Woodburn  offered 
as  his  contribution  to  the  celebration  of  the  co- 
partnership, which  Fulkerson  could  not  be  pre- 
vented from  dedicating  with  a  little  dinner,  the 
story  of  Fulkerson's  magnanimous  behaviour  in 
regard  to  Dryfoos  at  that  crucial  moment  when  it 
was  a  question  whether  he  should  give  up  Dryfoos 
or  give  up  March.  Fulkerson  winced  at  it ;  but 
Mrs.  March  told  her  husband  that  now,  whatever 
happened,  she  should  never  have  any  misgivings  of 
Fulkerson  again ;  and  she  asked  him  if  he  did  not 
think  he  ought  to  apologise  to  him  for  the  doubts 
with  which  he  had  once  inspired  her.  March  said 
that  he  did  not  think  so. 

The  Fulkersons  spent  the  summer  at  a  seaside 
hotel  in  easy  reach  of  the  city ;  but  they  returned 
early  to  Mrs.  Leighton's,  with  whom  they  are  to 
board  till  spring,  when  they  are  going  to  fit  up  Ful- 
kerson's bachelor  apartment  for  housekeeping.  Mrs. 
March,  with  her  Boston  scruple,  thinks  it  will  be 
odd,  living  over  the  Every  Other  Wed:  offices;  but 
there  will  be  a  separate  street  entrance  to  the 
apartment;  and  besides,  in  New  York  you  may  do 
anything. 

The  future  of  the  Leightons  promises  no  imme- 
diate change.  Kendricks  goes  there  a  good  deal  to 
see  the  Fulkersons,  and  Mrs.  Fulkerson  says  he 
comes  to  see  Alma.  He  has  seemed  taken  with  her 
ever  since  he  first  met  her  at  Dryfoos's,  the  day  of 
Lindau's  funeral,  and  though  Fulkerson  objects  to 


A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.       331 

dating  a  fancy  of  that  kind  from  an  occasion  of  that 
kind,  he  justly  argues  with  March  that  there  can  be 
no  harm  in  it,  and  that  we  are  liable  to  be  struck  by 
lightning  any  time.  In  the  meanwhile  there  is  no 
proof  that  Alma  returns  Kenclricks'  interest,  if  he 
feels  any.  She  has  got  a  little  bit  of  colour  into  the 
fall  exhibition ;  but  the  fall  exhibition  is  never  so 
good  as  the  spring  exhibition.  Wetmore  is  rather 
sorry  she  has  succeeded  in  this,  though  he  promoted 
her  success.  He  says  her  real  hope  is  in  black  and 
white,  and  it  is  a  pity  for  her  to  lose  sight  of  her 
original  aim  of  drawing  for  illustration.  . 

News  has  come  from  Paris  of  the  engagement  of 
Christine  Dryfoos.  There  the  Dryfooses  met  with 
the  success  denied  them  in  New  York ;  many 
American  plutocrats  must  await  their  apotheosis  in 
Europe,  where  society  has  them,  as  it  were,  in  a 
translation.  Shortly  after  their  arrival  they  were 
celebrated  in  the  newspapers  as  the  first  millionaire 
American  family  of  natural-gas  extraction  who  had 
arrived  in  the  capital  of  civilisation ;  and  at  a  French 
watering-place  Christine  encountered  her  fate — a 
nobleman  full  of  present  debts  and  of  duels  in  the 
past.  Fulkerson  says  the  old  man  can  manage  the 
debtor,  and  Christine  can  look  out  for  the  duellist. 
"  They  say  those  fellows  generally  whip  their  wives. 
He  'd  better  not  try  it  with  Christine,  I  reckon,  un- 
less he 's  practised  with  a  panther." 

One  day,  shortly  after  their  return  to  town  in  the 
autumn  from  the  brief  summer  outing  they  permitted 
themselves,  the  Marches  met  Margaret  Vance.  At 


332       A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES. 

first  they  did  not  know  her  in  the  dress  of  the  sister- 
hood which  she  wore;  but  she  smiled  joyfully, 
almost  gaily,  on  seeing  them,  and  though  she  hurried 
by  with  the  sister  who  accompanied  her,  and  did 
not  stay  to  speak,  they  felt  that  the  peace  that 
passeth  understanding  had  looked  at  them  from  her 
eyes. 

"  Well,  she  is  at  rest,  there  can't  be  any  doubt  of 
that,"  he  said,  as  he  glanced  round  at  the  drifting 
black  robe  which  folloAved  her  free,  nun-like  walk. 

"Yes,  now  she  can  do  all  the  good  she  likes," 
sighed  his  wife.  "  I  wonder — I  wonder  if  she  ever 
told  his  father  about  her  talk  with  poor  Conrad  that 
day  he  was  shot  ? " 

"I  don't  know.  I  don't  care.  In  any  event  it 
would  be  right.  She  did  nothing  wrong.  If  she 
unwittingly  sent  him  to  his  death,  she  sent  him  to 
die  for  God's  sake,  for  man's  sake." 

"Yes— yes.     But  still " 

"  Well,  we  must  trust  that  look  of  hers." 


THE  EKD. 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

Return  this  material  to  the  library 

from  which  it  was  borrowed. 


EMS  LIBRARY 

E  o  err  01 1990 

QLOCT1T199I 


'UUN131997 

QL  OCT  0  2 
s&zim 


r 


A     000  123  392     3 


i 


I 


